The Hollow Men (Russia and the West)

Far from formidable, Vladimir Putin and those around him in the Kremlin have made themselves prisoners of the past.

Russia’s frozen power structures condemn it to crisis. The adage about power and corruption going hand in hand fits the case, but there is a more ancient one that fits Putin and his immediate colleagues even better, in the Talmud: “Power buries those who wield it.” The Power Vertical When he succeeded Yeltsin, Putin did not have to choose top-down governance through what he called a “power vertical.” True, the roots of such a system were there in the 1990s, but so too was the potential for a more effective division of powers at the center, a better regional...

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