When Mr Putin became president he was seen as a pro-Western, economic liberal. He pledged to clamp down on the oligarchs who wielded power in the 1990s, and to restore the role of the state as chief arbiter. Instead, Ms Dawisha writes, he transformed “an oligarchy independent of and more powerful than the state into a corporatist structure in which oligarchs served at the pleasure of state officials, who themselves gained and exercised economic control…both for the state and for themselves.” The result is that 110 individuals control 35% of Russia’s wealth, according to Ms Dawisha.
Archives for November 2014
How Not to Get Away With Murder
The Next Era of Designers Will Use Data as Their Medium
How Magic Leap Is Secretly Creating a New Alternate Reality
The Blockchain Application Stack
How the Middle East’s First Nuclear War Started
A “fictional story by Mathew Burrows, who, for the past decade, has overseen the creation of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report—an intelligence-based futurist guide that has become essential reading for the White House as well as the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security.”