Search results for ""Author Tony Wood""

It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, in order to understand Russia today, the West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look at what lies beyond the Kremlin, to see Russia without Putin.In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood looks beyond Putin to explore the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. He shows that Russia is not strong but desperately trying to create a space for itself in an increasingly globalized and competitive world, Putin's reign is based on very thin ice; he is highly dependent on a small handful of powerful men who prop him up. Beyond the rich suburbs of Moscow, Russia is a country that is only surviving because of what remains of the soviet economy and culture rather than being held back by it.Wood reconsiders what kind of country has emerged from Russia's post-Soviet transformations. The introduction of the market in the 1990s was a failure than descended into kleptocracy. He shows that the revival of a new cold war is a myth. Russia's incursions into Syria, Ukraine and questions of collusion into western states are a sign of desperation rather than agression. Russia without Putin culminates with reflections on the paths Russia might take in the 21st century following Putin's re-election in March 2018. How will he placate the oligarchs who control the economy and how will he manage his succession, and protect his legacy?

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Ilya Budraitskis, one of the country's most prominent leftist political commentators, explores the strange fusion of free-market ideology and postmodern nationalism that now prevails in Russia, and describes the post-Soviet evolution of its left. He incisively describes the twists and contradictions of the Kremlin's geopolitical fantasies, which blend up-to-date references to "information wars" with nostalgic celebrations of the tsars of Muscovy. Despite the revival of aggressive Cold War rhetoric, he argues, the Putin regime takes its bearings not from any Soviet inheritance, but from reactionary thinkers such as the White émigré Ivan Ilyin. Budraitskis makes an invaluable contribution by reconstructing the forgotten history of the USSR's dissident left, mapping an entire alternative tradition of heterodox Marxist and socialist thought from Khrushchev's Thaw to Gorbachev's perestroika. Doubly outsiders, within an intelligentsia dominated by liberal humanists, they offer a potential way out of the impasse between condemnations of the entire Soviet era and blanket nostalgia for Communist Party rule-suggesting new paths for the left to explore.

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It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, in order to understand Russia today, the West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look at what lies beyond the Kremlin, to see Russia without Putin.In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood looks beyond Putin to explore the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. He shows that Russia is not strong but desperately trying to create a space for itself in an increasingly globalized and competitive world, Putin's reign is based on very thin ice; he is highly dependent on a small handful of powerful men who prop him up. Beyond the rich suburbs of Moscow, Russia is a country that is only surviving because of what remains of the soviet economy and culture rather than being held back by it.Wood reconsiders what kind of country has emerged from Russia's post-Soviet transformations. The introduction of the market in the 1990s was a failure than descended into kleptocracy. He shows that the revival of a new cold war is a myth. Russia's incursions into Syria, Ukraine and questions of collusion into western states are a sign of desperation rather than agression. Russia without Putin culminates with reflections on the paths Russia might take in the 21st century following Putin's re-election in March 2018. How will he placate the oligarchs who control the economy and how will he manage his succession, and protect his legacy?

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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future?These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, and a thorough knowledge of both official and unofficial histories, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states.Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman's narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia's political landscape, culminating in Putin's third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the "form" and "content" of imitation democracy, "the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power."

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Transnational Communism across the Americas offers an innovative approach to the study of Latin American communism. It convincingly illustrates that communist parties were both deeply rooted in their own local realities and maintained significant relationships with other communists across the region and around the world. The essays in this collection use a transnational lens to examine the relationships of the region’s communist parties with each other, their international counterparts, and non-communist groups dedicated to anti-imperialism, women’s rights, and other causes. Topics include the shifting relationship between Mexican communists and the Comintern, Black migrant workers in the Caribbean, race relations in Cuba, Latin American communists in the USSR, Luís Carlos Prestes in Brazil, the U.S. and Puerto Rican communist and Nationalist parties, peace activist networks in Latin America, communist women in Guatemala, transnational student groups, and guerrillas in El Salvador. Contributors: Marc Becker, Jacob Blanc, Tanya Harmer, Patricia Harms, Lazar Jeifets, Victor Jeifets, Adriana Petra, Margaret M. Power, Frances Peace Sullivan, Tony Wood, Kevin A. Young, and Jacob Zumoff

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