Vladimir Putin soon must make a fundamental choice: whether to hold on to monolithic power or to adopt a reformist course that could leave him at the center of a battle without any guarantee of success.
About the Author
Lilia Shevtsovais the author of Interregnum: Russia Between Past and Future (2014) and Putin’s Russia (2010).
Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power at the end of the 1990s, siloviki—the people who work for, or used to work for, Russia’s “ministries of force” have spread to posts…
Much like other institutions in post-Soviet Russia, the intelligence and security services have yet to make a transition to real democratic control, and remain infused with the authoritarian tendencies of…
