'Chill Breezes From the Past'; An incisive work explains Putin's shift toward centralized authority.(Book Review)

Byline: Anna Kuchment

Andrew Jack could hardly have picked a better time to come out with a book on Vladimir Putin. In the past two months, the Russian president has faced the worst string of terror attacks ever to hit Russian soil, from the coordinated bombings of two commercial aircraft to the Beslan school siege. He's responded with a stunning array of repressive measures aimed at tightening his already firm grip on power. Jack's book, "Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?" (362 pages. Oxford) was written before the latest crackdowns. But it helps contextualize some of the new concerns about Putin's leadership and about whether Russia, once seemingly on the path to democracy, is lurching instead toward dictatorship. "Today, there are chill breezes returning from the past," writes Jack, Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times.

Instead of echoing these dire warnings about Russia's future, Jack puts the president's moves into perspective. "Russia under Putin remains far from the police state that operated under Brezhnev, let alone Stalin," he writes. "His 'liberal authoritarian' regime is mixing Soviet with distinctly post-Soviet themes to create something new." Jack also shows why some degree of centralization was necessary to restore order after Boris Yeltsin's chaotic regime and to ensure the country's economic and political development. Under Yeltsin, "there was certainly pluralism," he writes. "But there was also sclerosis, with resolutions passed but ignored, and many reform projects simply not discussed at all." Under Putin, the Parliament drove through an ...