Putin and the Rise of Russia by Michael Stuermer, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2008).

Reviewed by Dr Mervyn Matthews

This is a wide-ranging assessment of the Russian political scene by an experienced German writer. Professor Michael Stuermer has held a number of eminent academic posts and was, at the time of publication, chief correspondent for Die Welt.  His list of helpers is impressive.

The core of the book is a review of the changes we in the West now have to digest with regard to Russia.  The country has ceased to be a military threat (she is far weaker than America) but has become, most disconcertingly, a potential master of energy supplies to Europe and beyond. Judging from events so far, we have cause for unease.

The first chapter opens at the Bayerische Hof hotel in Munich in February 2007, the venue of one of the post-Cold War security conferences.  There Putin startled the distinguished assemblage by voicing Russia’s dissatisfaction with the West, not least because it had (he claimed) imposed unfair trade agreements and encroached into Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Central Asia.  Putin’s intention was to warn the US that the uni-polar world which it desired was beyond  its reach.  ‘Future historians of world affairs’, Stuemer claimed, ‘will remember Putin’s speech in Munich as the turning point from uneasy accommodation to measured defiance.’

There follows a brief overview of the main steps in Vladimir Putin’s career from his enthusiastic application to join the KGB at seventeen (entry being deferred until his second year of legal studies at Leningrad University) up to his highly popular appointment as Prime Minister in August, 1999.  He benefited from his career in the KGB and association with the Yeltsin political family.  The author then presents his personal observations of Putin at half-a-dozen international conferences.  The Russian leader could display ‘an impressive amount of both nervous energy and self-assuredness’, he had facts and figures at his fingertips, was ready to answer direct questions without notice or advisors, and was ‘casually elegant in Italian suits’.  Stuermer suggests that the men around Putin fell into two competing groups—namely, the old and the new St Petersburg (SPB) clans, most of whose members served with Putin either in the KGB or the SPB city administration.  As a consequence of this association, Stuermer claims that ‘Much of the security forces, the government and the economy is now directly or indirectly under the control of the intelligence services’, the so-called siloviki.  This is bad for Russia because such people lack business experience, do not attract foreign investment and do not modernize.  Also, they are using their power to acquire business interests under the guise of a re-privatization campaign.

Stuermer’s overview of the Cold War (which comes next) centres on the American policy of containment and the nuclear balance, against the background of changing Soviet leaderships.  The Soviet Union collapsed (he says) as a consequence of ‘imperial over-stretch’, while the resurgence is due not only to the shedding of the ‘imperial burden’, but also to the possession of vast oil and gas reserves, of which more in a moment.  The author offers a useful survey of Russian military problems.  The loss of the Kursk submarine in August 2000 only reflected the sorry state of the armed forces.  Putin has actively set about improving matters by starting to convert to an all-volunteer army, improve the troops’ housing, training, equipment and prestige.  Numbers have been reduced to just over a million (as against five million in Soviet times).  After gas and oil, arms are Russia’s third largest export commodity.

Incidentally, the anti-missile system which the Pentagon wishes to deploy in Poland and Czech Republic is premature, and ‘can only be explained in terms of [US] prestige and anxiety’.

The treaties limiting nuclear weaponry are crucial: Russia views terrorism as a major threat.

The focus then shifts, a little unexpectedly, to Kazan, capital of the Tatar Republic as an exemplar of Russia’s Islamic dimension.  The author has a kind word to say for the democratic leanings of Mintimer Shaimiev, the popular President.  Since the collapse of the USSR Tatar Islam has flourished, and the number of mosques has grown from less than a dozen to many hundreds.  Putin evidently regards the loss of the Islamic republics in the south as an unmitigated disaster, but Stuermer considers it a blessing in disguise: despite the loss of natural resources, it rid Russia of fractious peoples, mostly Moslems.  Labour shortages have prompted an influx of ethnically diverse groups.  Stuemer touches upon the worrying fall in the Russian population which Putin hopes eventually to counter by encouraging young families to have more children, by improving health services and housing.

Arguably the most interesting chapter in this book concerns energy.  Russia’s oil and gas reserves are apparently, at the current rates of extraction, enough to last up to 30 and 180 years respectively. Well over a third of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, and the proportion is likely to increase.  On the other hand, Europe buys 60% of Gazprom’s output, but Russia is dependent on this income for technical development.  The Russian energy policy is expansionist and involves owning or controlling (‘down-stream’) sections of pipelines from Russia and Central Asia into the West, while encouraging Western firms to take minority shares in Russian enterprises.  There is a small but useful map of the gas pipeline network. LNG (gas liquification procedures) are being developed, so that Russia can eventually ship gas to other continents, including Africa.  From the Western point view, however, political factors, state intervention and Russian-style corruption mean that the commercial relationships are uneasy, the recent dispute with Ukraine and the gas cut-off being a case in point.  Chapter Ten reviews in more detail the difficulties of doing business in Russia.  The outlook on the Russian energy production side is not altogether bright either, as the output of the three major Gazprom fields declines at 6–7% a year, and the development of new sources lags behind possible demand.

As for Russian foreign policy, Stuermer sees it as being in a state of flux, with little global cohesion beyond the wish to translate eight years of windfall profits into a dominant position in world commerce. The US insistence on human rights and democratic values is regarded as a foreign intrusion.  Poland, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, Georgia and Ukraine are sore points, as are foreigners’ observation of Russian elections and foreign support for non-governmental organizations inside Russia.

The five-day war in Georgia is important as an indication that NATO is to be kept at bay.

Russia’s main concerns are the North-South divide, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  The last chapter presents a rather optimistic profile of Dmitri Medvedev, the new, Putin-supported president.  Medvedev has expressed liberal, anti-corruption views on the economy and evidently believes in the regulatory power of the market.  Stuermer believes he will follow Putin’s policies, while Putin retains ultimate authority. Foreign policy will remain the same, but will be sotto voce.  The book gives a fleeting glimpse of conditions at home—we are told that poverty is widespread and four out of ten Russian villages have neither running water nor electricity.

This volume, in my view, provides a useful overview for people generally interested in Russia, though it contains few new revelations.  I rather regretted that some important dimensions—like overall social change, the rise of the new Russian élite, inadequate living conditions, media censorship, Putin’s actual control of politics—are rather neglected, perhaps for reasons of space.  One small point, I was surprised to find the new cathedral of Christ the Redeemer assigned to Red Square, though it is in fact quite a distance away.  Nevertheless, Professor Stuermer’s thesis—that a new era of limited confrontation has begun—is surely quite accurate. It is ironic that Russia’s ‘rise’, as registered in the title of the book, is now being hindered by the world economic crisis, while Putin’s overriding popularity is being dented by public protest.

Dr Mervyn Matthews taught Russian for many years at the University of Surrey and he has written extensively on Soviet and Russian society.