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"This elegantly written book is an incisive chronicle of contemporary Russian history. . . . Leon Aron has the firsthand observer’s keen eye for the twists of fate and the skilled analyst’s deep knowledge of the interplay of events that brought Putin to, and then well-beyond, the point of no return."
—Fiona Hill, distinguished senior fellow, Brookings Institution; senior director for European and Russian affairs, National Security Council
In Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War, Leon Aron, an acclaimed Russian studies scholar, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, and Moscow native who was sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin’s regime, chronicles the transformation of Russian politics and society under Putin. Through hundreds of Russian-language sources, Aron shows how Putin uses militarist propaganda and sanitized revisionist images of World War II, Stalin, and the Soviet Union to forge a nationalist and loyal core of his regime’s support.
And the “new Russia” suddenly looks a lot like the old USSR.
Dr. Aron’s bold, expert analysis of Russian political culture helps us better understand Russia’s revanchist tendencies, its invasion of Ukraine, and the perilous road ahead. Aron argues that Putin’s actions are driven by the Russian president’s need to ensure his regime’s survival, avenge the fall of the Soviet Union, combat the “America-led West,” and make Russia a superpower again. Putin is now stuck in a vast and savage war that he can neither win nor walk away from. He hopes America and its allies undergo “Ukraine fatigue,” but what if he decides he cannot outwait the West? Aron concludes the book with a detailed scenario of another war in which Putin would bring Russia and the US to the brink of nuclear conflict to scare the West into a “settlement” in Ukraine.
“Leon Aron, one of our most astute observers of Russia, has produced a vivid analysis of Putin’s state, founded on militarized patriotism and primed for war. One of the most important stories of our time.”
—Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Gulag: A History (Anchor Books, 2004); staff writer, Atlantic
Leon Aron was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union. He is the author of Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987–1991 (Yale University Press, 2012); Russia’s Revolution: Essays, 1989–2006 (AEI Press, 2007); and Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). From 2014 to 2020, he served on the board of trustees of the US Agency for Global Media. He holds a PhD from Columbia University and is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Contents
Introduction
1. The Vladimir Putin Story
2. The House That Putin Built
3. Russia Under Siege
4. Worshipping the Nukes
5. The Next War
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
Bibliography
Index