Nothing is True and Everything is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev

  A very interesting book about how the modern Russian mafia state works, and how Russia has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putin.  What makes this book interesting is who's stories the author tells.  This is not an analytical book, a theoretical book, nor a look at well-known key figures.  The author tells the stories of regular, everyday people that he meets in the course of his ten years of working for Russian media. (His difference as a reporter is that he actually grew up in London but kept up his Russian with his dissident parents who had moved there.)
   Some salient points:
   The historical progression goes something like this:  The fall of the Soviet Union leads to the rise of two groups; mega-entrepreneurs who quickly become very rich, and a well-organized criminal mafia with roots in the Gulag system.  This leads to chaos.  The rise of Putin follows, and he uses the KGB structure to rein in/destroy/subsume the independent criminal mafia.  Putin uses his new KGB mafia alliance to destroy or rein in the mega-entrepreneur class.  Slowly the mega-entrepreneurs transfer their wealth to London and leave the country.  Huge amounts of money are extorted, profitable business are taken over, whole areas of the economy are taken over, and the resulting spoils are distributed amongst Putin's underlings.  Slowly the mega-entrepreneurs transfer their wealth to London and leave the country.  The government/mafia inserts itself into most of the economy.
    It becomes clear in the book that Putin controls all levers of power in the country - government, military, criminal organizations, media, the courts, the economy.  It would seem the only crack in the structure is when Putin is no longer, but the result will probably resemble a civil war amongst various underlings to capture the top position - which won't help the country at all; in fact, make everything worse.

   Like China, it would be very interesting to study this phenomenon of countries where revolutionaries have tried to destroy the organically rooted culture and replace it with an entirely new imposed ideologically based culture.  These types of radical breaks do something strange to the society.  It would be interesting to look at this from a sociological point of view.  I wonder if there are parallels to be made with various personal psychological issues and pathologies...