(New York: Free Press, 2011) 523 pp.

A Book Review by Andrej Kreutz, Ph.D.

Treisman’s book is a lengthy and relatively well-researched description and analysis of the last 25 years of Russia’s history and its relations with the West. The work is not chronological, but presents discussions of a number of topics chosen by the author, such as: the role of Mikhail Gorbachev (the Captain) in Russian history, the collapse of the USSR, the social and economic transformations, the Mountains (the Caucasus’ problems), falling apart of Russian-American relations, and “the Russia that has returned”. In the special and rather short chapter which is placed in the middle of the book, “The Logic of Politics”, Treisman presents his theory about the mechanisms of changes of Russian politics, which he, perhaps one-sidedly, explains mainly by the variations of the natural gas and oil prices.

• Andrej Kreutz  |  Published on EGF: 20.03.2011
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Reviewed by Professor Andrej Kreutz

Markedly different from Helen Belopolski’s monograph ‘Russia and the Challengers: Russian Alignment with China, Iran, and Iraq in the Unipolar Era,’ which I have already reviewed, Jeffery Mankoff’s work, which was published as a Council on Foreign Relations Book, cannot claim to be a non-partisan and purely analytical study.

• Andrej Kreutz  |  Published on EGF: 22.12.2010  |  External Relations
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