Karen Dawisha Quotes

So 91 failed but 2000 succeeded...

[T]wo numbers is all we need. The median... wealth for the average Russian is $871, according to ... Median wealth in India, over a thousand dollars. The other number is 110... individuals own 35 percent of the wealth of Russia.... the most unequal country by far in the world.

I also got a few reviews from people who said, "ok, so they're corrupt, but it's not a ." So... what do I mean by saying that... a political system is a kleptocracy?

[T]he system is... mutual support and tribute. It's a system. If you are on a list of possible people who might be approached to be a member of the ... you have to pay for your seat. Once you’re in... you can... charge businessmen to have line items in the budget. Same thing all across all sectors.

International, with Timchenko as co-owner... grew out of and benefited from the Russian state's dismantling of in 2003... gained control of... 5 percent of Russia’s total economic output and revenues of over $70 billion annually.

The Economist outlined the essential truths of the Putin era...<blockquote>The job of Russian law enforcers is to protect the interests of the state, personified by their... boss, against the people. ...[F]ormer (and not so former) members ...have gained huge political and ...since ...Putin came to office. ...[T]op ranks in the ...FSB ...describe themselves as the ...new nobility ...personally loyal to the monarch and entitled to an estate with people to serve ...As Russia’s former Procurator General ...said in front of ...Putin: "We are the people of the sovereign." Thus they do not see a redistribution of property from private hands into their own as theft but as their right.</blockquote>

[T]his older generation of KGB generals... who were not in prison, put people in and got them prepared, and Putin was the one who rose to the top... That's my argument.

... in 2005 became head of . In... 2013 Putin announced... $43 billion... borrowed from Russia’s pension fund... to stimulate the economy, including $14 billion to build three infrastructure projects, two... by Russian Railways. The Russian free media... forecast... such... would... stimulate... corruption. ...Navalnyy ...criticized Yakunin’s entry to... Russia’s billionaires... as the head of a state-owned firm ...a salaried employee ..."In all other countries, the railways are used for movement, but we use them for stealing."

I had published six books already with Cambridge.

The pattern we see now of the redistribution of to the inner core, has been in place since the beginning, and even before . This is not a system in which robber barons create the industrial basis of a robust emerging capitalist economy. This is a system in which barons are robbed by value-detracting state raiding elites whose sole position is determined by their relationship to the current president. Value-detraction is an extremely important part of this picture.

They needed... situations in which, if they could postpone... elections entirely and make it more difficult for the opposition to focus on unimportant things, like the corruption of the Yeltsin family. ...So there was a real Yeltsin interest... also... a Putin interest because he wanted to be president. ...I think ...evidence that there was an FSB operation to place explosives in the apartment building in Ryazan is incontrovertible.

[I]t was a detailed account of the criminal activities that [Andrey Zykov] feels Putin was involved in—abuse of power... of his official position... relations with organized crime, knowledge about money laundering... a whole range of economic crimes.

[A] rich... hybrid combination of Chekists, mobsters, and officials in bureaucratic positions of power existed throughout the USSR... Putin was at the nexus of these three worlds: ...[A] former ...employee, "Nikolay" ...claims ...he was approached by his superior ...1990 to be part of the following scheme:<blockquote>...a new clandestine structure ...Your personnel files will be removed ...No one will ...know your past. ...you will ...work for the Fatherland. Against those who want to destroy it. ...I worked ...cleaning up the archives of the . ...hundreds of [files] removed. Including ...Putin. After the failed coup of '91... as the chief financial officer ...on behalf of the KGB. ...Money ...and more money. ...in one offshore paradise or another. We... were moving millions and millions of dollars into bank vaults. ....along those same channels ...money from organized crime ...I would not be able to tell which monies belonged to the KGB and which to the mafia. In response to ...questions, they responded: just move the damn money. And I did.</blockquote>

[W]hat they saw in... [Putin] was that he had protected Sobchak. And as they said, "He didn't give up Sobchak, and he's not going to give us up."

While we talked about the failure of the 1991 coup... the failure of the efforts by the conservatives to oust Gorbachev... it's a much more complex situation. ...[S]ome ...were quickly tried and put into jail, but for very short periods and very few people... even though this was a nation-wide conspiracy... 1991 failed as an incident, but the effort to return... preeminence... as a protector of the grand Russian idea... became part of the project of bringing Putin to power in 2000.