Anne Applebaum in the New York Review of Books writes onPutin’s Kleptoccracy. Who Owns Russia by Karen Dawisha: The question is asked: Did the failure of reforms, of privatization, bring us to Russia today, or did the ascendancy of Putin and his KGB friends Instead from the beginning sought to create an authoritarian regime ruled by a close-knit cabal…who used democracy for decoration rather than direction.This is the remarkable story of one group of unrepentant, single-minded, revanchist KGB officers who were horrified by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the prospect of their own loss of influence.In league with Russian organized crime, starting at the end of the 1980s, they successfully plotted a return to power. Assisted by the unscrupulous international offshore banking industry, they stole money that belonged to the Russian state, took it abroad for safety, reinvested it in Russia, and then, piece by piece, took over the state themselves. Once in charge, they brought back Soviet methods of political control—the only ones they knew—updated for the modern era. Russian Kleptocracy
