Tony Wood is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War (revised edition Verso, 2020).
After the Soviet Union’s fall, the West backed Boris Yeltsin as a paragon of democracy, even as his administration rigged elections and empowered a new capitalist class. Now, under Vladimir Putin, the crisis of Russia’s democracy is only intensifying.
Very little about the horrific war that Russia is waging against Ukraine seems based on solid calculations by Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to imagine the war benefiting Russia in the long run. Why, then, is Putin waging it?
Twenty years ago, a crisis of Russian capitalism doomed Moscow’s pro-Western regime and gave birth to the Putin era.