Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront the West

Anyone who wants to understand Russia should at once beg for, borrow, or buy (not steal) this book—it stands alone among efforts to explain Russia’s behavior and policies. Among the flood of works purporting to elucidate Vladimir Putin or Moscow’s domestic and/or foreign policies, this is the best effort thus far to remind readers that Russia is the problem, not Putin. It is the best because unlike so much literature on Russia that pursues some holy grail of contemporary political theory and assumes that Russian history began with Mikhail Gorbachev or Putin, this book takes Russian history and culture seriously. And contemporary Russian behavior makes complete sense to people like Keir Giles who take that context seriously.