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The Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev, by Daniel Treisman
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In this critically acclaimed book, now available in paperback, noted scholar Daniel Treisman offers a refreshing and exhaustively reported look at the political, economic, and cultural changes in Russia, with an in-depth examination of the modern state and its role in global affairs.
Almost twenty-five years after Mikhail Gorbachev began radically reshaping his country, Russia has changed beyond recognition. In his third book on this subject, Professor Daniel Treisman takes stock of the country that has emerged from the debris of Soviet communism and addresses the questions that preoccupy scholars of its history and politics: Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Could its collapse have been avoided? Did Yeltsin destroy too much or too little of the Soviet political order? What explains Putin’s unprecedented popularity with the Russian public?
Based on two decades of research and his own experiences in the country, Treisman cuts through the scholarly and journalistic debates to provide a portrait of a country returning to the international community on its own terms. At a time when global politics are more important than ever, The Return illuminates the inner workings of a country that has increasingly come to influence, and which will continue to shape, American foreign policy and world events.
- Sales Rank: #698368 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Free Press
- Published on: 2012-01-10
- Released on: 2012-01-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.81" h x 1.60" w x 5.81" l, 1.23 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 544 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. UCLA professor Treisman (Without a Map) explores the path of postcommunist Russia in this engrossing study. While Gorbachev transformed his country through nuclear disarmament, glasnost, and perestroika and allowed the Berlin Wall to come down, and Yeltsin introduced Russians to competitive elections, a democratic constitution, and (putative) freedom of the press, it is the autocratic Putin--a former KGB agent who rolled back some of his predecessors' reforms--who remains popular even in his current role as prime minister to President Dmitri Medvedev. Drawing on two decades of research, Treisman analyzes the paradoxes in Russian politics and society, illuminating why the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. wasn't more violent, the repercussions of the Chechen wars, the "sacred place" vodka holds in the Russian imagination (and its pernicious effect on Russia's demographics), and how, 20 years after the fall of communism, relations between Russia and the U.S. remain so frosty. Yet as Treisman convincingly argues, most of the world's international problems--nuclear proliferation, Islamic terrorism, global warming--will be difficult to solve without Russia's help. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The politics and economics of post-Communist Russia occupy this survey of the past two decades. Treisman, a UCLA political science professor, works commentary about Russia’s successive leaders—Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev—into the problems they confronted. Holding that the USSR could have muddled along for a while, Treisman depicts Gorbachev as overconfident, heedless of what actually unified the multinational USSR: coercion and censorship. When everybody ran for the exits in 1991, it fell to Yeltsin to corral the stampede. Treisman accords considerable credit to the policies of the burly Siberian, noting that breakup of the USSR could have been much more violent, with Chechnya a glaring exception. However, the 1990s turbulent privatization and economic decline presaged centripetal political force, of which Vladimir Putin became the agent. Treisman’s assessment of Putinism in the 2000s observes its authoritarian strengthening of Russia at some expense to political and economic liberalism. Encompassing foreign policy and Russian public opinion, Treisman’s knowledgeable presentation is a reliable current-affairs source for Russia’s economic revival and reassertion in international affairs. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
"A crisp, unromantic overview of the rocky Russian journey to join the world markets....A tight, modern, and relevant study of the 'Russia that has returned.'"--Kirkus Reviews
“The comprehensiveness and clarity of The Return make it a valuable resource for anyone trying to make sense of the puzzle that is Russia.”--Dallas Morning News
"Treisman explores the path of postcommunist Russia in this engrossing study."--Publishers Weekly
“This excellent book provides both an elegant and comprehensive account of Russia’s turbulent history over the last quarter century and penetrating and sometimes surprising analyses of the main political and economic issues that that history raises.”
--Michael Mandelbaum, author, The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era
“Daniel Treisman treats us to an elegant and learned history that demystifies Russia’s transformation from a communist state to a normal country. This is the best and most readable account of Russia’s rebirth.”
--Anders Åslund, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics
“Daniel Treisman has written a book about Russia today that is calm, sane, judicious, very well informed, and written in the kind of prose that makes you want to read on. It is a welcome and necessary antidote to much fashionable Western writing that portrays Russia as a kleptocracy ruled by a secret policeman intent on victory in a new Cold War…. Russia has certainly returned. Whether we like it or not we are likely, if we want to achieve our own objectives, to find ourselves having to treat the Russians with the respect they believe they deserve, and can increasingly command.”
--Rodric Braithwaite, former UK ambassador to the Soviet Union and Russia, author of Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down and Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War
“Possessing both deft storytelling abilities and deep scholarly knowledge, Treisman provides a truly masterful exposition of the tumultuous past two decades in Russian history, politics, and society. Anyone interested in Russia and its leaders should read this book.”
--James Goldgeier, George Washington University
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
An excellent, thoughtful analysis of Russia's recent development
By Graham
The Return provides a well written, thoughtful, and balanced analysis of the key transitions Russia encountered from the Soviet collapse to 2010.
One of Treisman's concerns is that analyses of Russia tend to delight in painting black and white pictures, or in enthusiastically identifying "the" cause for some complex change. Treisman emphasizes that life is rarely so simple and that (like the Western democracies) Russia is a medley of different views and its key changes were driven by multiple competing forces. The titular leaders often had very limited freedom of maneuver as they faced increasingly chaotic day-to-day realities, so the interplay of forces is as significant as any one driver.
The book starts with four biographical chapters providing fairly high level overviews of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev. These introductory chapters also provide a general historical outline of the period but they skate quickly over most of the tougher issues, as those are reserved for the later analytical chapters which are the main meat of the book. These cover the dissolution of the USSR, the transition of the economy, Chechnya, the tensions of internal politics, the souring of Russian-US relations, and finally a survey of the realities of Russia today.
The chapter on the USSR dissolution is particularly interesting. Treisman discusses the famous Russia-Ukraine-Belarus summit in December 1991 which sounded the death knell of the USSR by launching the CIS, but he argues that Yeltsin and the other leaders were reacting to events more than driving them. The USSR had already effectively disintegrated and power had already passed to the squabbling Republics. Treisman also argues that "nationalism" is only a very partial explanation. This had not been a visible issue in most of the newly independent republics before 1990. Even in 1991, the clamor for independence was not simply along ethnic lines. In most Republics a large percentage of the Russian population also supported local independence.
Many factors were at play, but one key unexpected factor was the timing of regional elections in 1990. These were among the first truly democratic elections and they naturally encouraged candidates to focus on regional issues and on regional discontents with the increasingly dysfunctional economic system. And they gave the newly elected Republic governments unexpected legitimacy as the voice of the people against the center. So as the center continued to weaken, the Republics became powerful foci.
Economic policy was also less a matter of planning than of reaction. In 1991 the economy was already running wild. The state no longer had the coercive power to impose prices and managers were freely looting their enterprises. Given this, the government wasn't so much initiating pricing, market and ownership reform as it was trying to impose order on a process that was already underway. Treisman paints the post-1991 reforms as a series of complicated compromises in a very chaotic situation. He emphasizes that reform was not a short sharp shock. Subsidies for failing enterprises and farms ran on for years. The real GDP drop in usable goods seems to have been much lower than the raw numbers indicate and many consumers appear to have improved their lives considerably during this period.
There is a useful chapter on Chechnya, surveying that tragic quagmire. Hard conclusions are difficult, but Treisman observes that unlike the many other semi-secessionist regions in the early 90s, Chechnya seems to have been unlucky in having a regional leader (Dudayev) who lacked the political savvy to accept advantageous compromise deals with Moscow.
In the chapter "Falling Apart" Treisman analyzes why US-Russian relations soured. He notes that analysts in the US and Russia have very different views of what went wrong, so he provides separate sub-chapters giving both a progressive Moscow view and a progressive Washington view. From the Russian side, the US seemed patronizing, oblivious to Russia's concerns and also to suffer from a bad case of "the pot calling the kettle black". From the US side, Russia often seemed to be unduly sensitive and to be resisting the inevitable. Both views probably have some truth.
The final chapter analyzes the reality of Russia today versus common stereotypes. Treisman crunches through various statistics to make the general case that, when compared with countries of similar GDP/head, Russia is not in any sense an abnormal state. Rather, for its general level of prosperity it tends to fall within the middle range on metrics such as corruption, crime, income inequality, press freedom, and even political transparency. That isn't to say that Russia shouldn't become better on all of these counts, but it does suggest that it should be perceived as a "normal" medium prosperity country, rather than as some alarming outlier. Finally, and rather intriguingly, he notes that independent surveys indicate that average Russians see themselves as having become both happier and more free over the last decade. Which if it is true would be very good news.
Overall, this is an excellent, well written, and thoughtful analysis of Russia's recent transitions. It does a great job of explaining how there was often much more going on than first meets the eye. I've read a number of other accounts of the post-Soviet experience, and Treisman easily eclipses them.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Balanced ,well researched,detailed but flawed on a number of points
By H. Williams
This book differs from the western mainstream views of russia that depict it as a corrupt,autocracy ruled by a regime of thugs and instead show that the problems that Russia encounters are normal for a middle income country.He shows that Russia is a much more complicated story than expected.He delivers a balanced portrait of every russian leader since Gorbachev.He shows that Putin did a lot by going against his powerbase in the KGB and military to promote a good relationship with Washington (by giving support to the Us in Central Asia and afghanistan after 9-11,by closing down bases in Vietnam and Cuba) and what he got in return (NATO expansion,the abrogation of the ABM treaty and breaking of international law in Iraq and Kosovo) amounted to a betrayal.IT shows that the kremlin whilst it does engage in anti-democratic actions (such as rigging elections) is also sensitive to and attentive to public opinion and that its human right record as well as authoritarian tendencies are exaggerated (due ,in my opinion,to western russophobia left over from the 19th century great game between the Tsar and the British and the cold war).That said Dr.Treisman makes some conclusions that are questionable.He claims that Yeltsin's era was the most democratic in Russian history when a lot of the authoritarian tendencies (rigging elections,the destruction of the freedom of the press due to the oligarchs ,the war in chechnya) started in that era.Similarly he claims that the economic recovery was partly due to Putin's early reforms and partly due to the rise in energy prices ,neglecting to mention that in Putin's PHD dissertion he mentioned using such a strategy for recovery of the economy and influence.His claim the loans for shares was not as bad for the country or that the oligarchs were not as powerful is highly debatable as well as his claim that Khodorkovsky was fostering civil society omitting that Khodorkovsky's demise was caused by his actions to replace Putin as Russia's political master through bribing parties in the duma.(it is strange that the only western kremlinologist who has mentioned this is dmitri simes when it was mentioned commonly amongst the Russian political and business elite).Nevertheless,the book is the most objective analysis of Russia's trajectory over the past 20 years,where it is now and where it could be in the future.A must read for Russia watchers.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Medvedev Arrives
By Susan Southworth
UCLA Professor Daniel Treisman scurries past the last Soviet leaders, characterizing Leonid Brezhnev's last years as "stagnant" and Yuri Andropov as "the most enigmatic." He notes that Mikhail Gorbachev sought personal international prestige by taking dramatic steps such as the unification of Germany to leverage the modernization of the Soviet system, but questions whether he achieved anything that justified his unilateral concessions.
Turning to Boris Yeltsin, Treisman sets a dramatic scene, "...the mass of ordinary Russians in front of him, the grandmothers in headscarves, the men with missing teeth, their children on their shoulders. They love him or they hate him." Mikhail Gorbachev described him as "...by nature a destroyer..." but Yeltsin disappointed many by not dismantling the KGB. "A group of Yeltsin's aides agree that in late 1991 the KGB was `demoralized' and 'preparing for self-liquidation.' Instead, Yeltsin appointed a drinking companion to lead it and soon restored some of its old powers." The Natural, as Treisman labels him for his populist touch in front of crowds, was the son of a carpenter who "...helped the local branch of Stalin's secret police fulfill its monthly quota for arresting anti-Soviet agitators."
The introduction to the Vladimir Putin chapter is even more imaginative. "The movie would begin with a wide-angled shot of the bombed out building. ...Cut to the manicured lawn of an elegant dacha ...outside Moscow. The prime minister is drinking coffee with his daughter, intermittently tossing a ball to his Labrador. As the camera lingers on his face, we see a tough but devoted father. He will not let her go shopping with a friend. ...We watch his expressionless face."
Even in childhood, Putin comes off as menacing. An only child, he grew up in a 20 square meter room of a communal apartment close by the Leningrad headquarters of the KGB where he tried to volunteer as a teenager entranced by KGB heroes in films and pulp fiction. He was a street tough and an average student except for his "remarkable memory." After college, his easy grasp of foreign languages proved useful when he was offered a job in the KGB and sent to Dresden after foreign language training. He was 32 years old and spent almost four years in East Germany, watching as the Soviet Union withered.
Returning to Leningrad, Putin was hired by the liberal Anatoly Sobchak, an outspoken critic of the KGB. Sobchak's vulgar outburst when Putin confided his KGB status impressed him. Putin became Sobchak's chief aide and resigned from the KGB. Putin's loyalty to Sobchak and others was tested later in Moscow and never found wanting, an aid to his advancement through a series of bureaucracies. Treisman indicates "...he showed himself willing to fight dirty..." to protect Yeltsin from a corruption investigation by the procurator general. (Putin claimed to recognize a naked man seen only from the rear with two women in a grainy black and white video as that same procurator general and helped to hustle him out of office.) The sinister portrait: "a vague taste in the mouth, a smell in the air, as characteristic of Russia under Putin as the Mercedes luxury model clogging urban intersections" is offset by Treisman's corrections of a number of popular criticisms of Putin. Presidential appointment rather than election of regional governors was an early Yeltsin era innovation, simply continued by Putin and Medvedev. Although the criminal code was entirely rewritten in 1997, important reforms didn't arrive until the new Putin/Medvedev criminal code, enacted in 2002-3, introduced the presumption of innocence, adversarial representation with increased defense rights and extended jury trials. The Tax Police Department was created in 1993, developed its staff and procedures slowly and cases took years to mature. Nor was Putin the only one to put former security service personnel in the bureaucracy and Kremlin. "...(T)he share of security and military veterans in government doubled between 1988 and 1993, and then doubled again by 1999." This despite Putin's pink slips to one-third of the FSB officers during his brief months heading that organization before becoming Prime Minister under Yeltsin.
The picture of Putin's charming and brilliant "understudy" is a complete contrast. This book offers the most extensive look at Dmitriy Medvedev available in English at the beginning of 2011. The son of Leningrad intellectuals was a diligent, questioning and superior student. He entered the prestigious Imperial Law School that had been founded in 1724 by Peter the Great. After completing his PhD (on the legal status of state enterprises in a market economy), he remained as a professor. "Teachers and fellow students remember him as correct, diplomatic in argument, making his point firmly yet without offending his opponent." Attracted to liberal professors, the polite and diligent student even got away with a shocking toast, "To the rebirth of private law in Russia" at a 1980's department celebration.
In 1989 he enthusiastically campaigned for the liberal Sobchak, who had served on his dissertation committee. Professor Yuri Tolstoy remembers him, "...drunk with the air of freedom ... ." When the Leningrad police confiscated some of the campaign leaflets, "Medvedev spent the evening running off a new set on an old mimeograph machine." While teaching law, Medvedev began spending a day a week in City Hall where he met Putin, then heading the foreign investment efforts for Mayor Sobchak. Soon Putin left for Moscow while Medvedev continued to teach law until November 1999, when he moved to Moscow at Putin's invitation. Yeltsin resigned a month later and the young law Professor was named manager of Putin's Presidential campaign. Despite Putin's disinclination toward campaigns, Medvedev once more had a successful campaign. He failed, however, in his attempt to provide electioneering help to Putin's favored candidate, the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich in the Ukrainian Presidential election in 2004.
The Presidency was something that happened to Medvedev. In 2010 Professor Denis Alexeev, at Saratov State University summed up the power relationship between Putin and Medvedev by telling me Putin calls Medvedev, Dima, while Medvedev calls Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Since becoming President himself, Medvedev has continued Putin's extensive use of the best polling companies in Russia to gauge the concerns of citizens in all the country's regions. "Besides keeping an eye on their own ratings, Russia's leaders have taken positions in line with the prevailing majority view on many policy issues." After satisfying our curiosity about the largely unknown Medvedev, Treisman backtracks to review the Soviet collapse, the Yeltsin favorability freefall to 6% by 1999, Chechnya, NATO enlargement, and the impact of the Kosovo and South Ossetia Wars on Russians' views of the West. Then he returns to the "tandemocracy" of the present.
Treisman does as good a job as any author of explaining to the US audience how the Russians see themselves and the world. "For two decades, it has been in retreat, vacating Eastern Europe, casting off its third world allies, and withdrawing into its borders, even as its new neighbors discriminate against their Russian-speaking minorities and its old rival, the United States, strikes out with missiles and infantry brigades all over the globe. Yet authoritative voices in the west portray Russia as on a rampage, bent on rebuilding an empire." Russians think Russia has become more democratic and personal freedom has increased since the 1990's ended. Their view of their lives is a complete contrast with much of the analysis in the U.S. In the "New York Times" Nicholas Kristof called Vladimir Putin a "Russified Pinochet or Franco" taking Russia into fascism and threatening independent former Soviet bloc countries. Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed Putin's agenda resembles "Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930's." Niall Ferguson also compared Putin to Hitler. Treisman presents all the criticisms of Putin, providing supporting evidence for some but finds most too extreme. In discussing the reduction of the size and role of the security service from the all-knowing repressive role it had played for most (or all) of the 20th century, the author argues, "...it was not democracy that Putin integrated the law enforcement bodies and secret services into, but the capitalist market."
In his final chapter, "The Russia That Has Returned," Treisman compares Russia with other countries in corruption, journalist safety, press freedom, happiness, crime and prosecution using international metrics. He finds that Russia compares favorably even to western analysts favorites such as Brazil, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. "In July 2009, Reporters Without Borders ...characterized Presidents Putin and Medvedev as `Predators of Press Freedom,' along with Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, and North Korea's Kim Jong-Il." The author goes on to demonstrate the absurdity of this claim and shows that Russian journalists are better off than their peers in all but a very few countries. They are also the most numerous of any country, with 102,300 newspaper journalists while the U.S. has less than 50,000 and shrinking as newspapers disappear. "The attacks on Putin for nationalizing `the entire energy sector' are mystifying for two reasons. First, he didn't, and, second, most others did." The author then lists 41 countries that nationalized their entire energy resources in the late 20th or early 21st century.
Treisman's smooth narrative flow in an engaging non-academic tone is almost novelistic with 100 pages of notes at the back of the book not footnoted in the text so there is no interruption. Anyone curious about the "Tandemocracy" leading Russia, and, especially, the younger partner, will want to read this book now.
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