Book Review: Putin's Kleptocracy, 2014, by Karen Dawisha, Simon & Schuster,

     I love the word kleptocracy.  It's so evocative.  It evokes images of well-dressed rogues running amok through the halls of government office buildings, stuffing  bags with money, laughing as the shunt it off to off shore accounts( and a few in Swiss banks).   Of course, it also includes mental illness: they HAD to steal; they could not stop stealing once they started.
     This a history of Putin's rise to power along with his KGB cronies since he was an assistant mayor in St. Petersburg, the "gangsters' paradise of the new Russia.   Quick learner Putin realized that here was the opportunity of a life time: grab the reins of power that were blowing loose in the winds of change.  Seize them he did, and lots of money while doing it, especially for his KGB gang of thieves.  Professor Dawisha, of Miami, Ohio Univ. , writes well and provides ample evidence, including material from wikileaks.   Her work is the most detailed look inside the corruption of the Russian government to date.  Unfortunately, it will not be translated into the Russian soon enough to affect events in Ukraine, etc.  Other titles have spoken of Russian corruption at the highest levels of government-see Masha Gessen's "The Man Without a Face",(2013) and "The Corporation"(2009) by Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky.   The author does much to identify "who owns Russia".
Thanks for the review go to Anna Arutunyan, a Moscow- based journalist and the authur of "The Putin Mystique:  Inside Russia's Power Cult".
Be bold-read this book; grasp international politics.  Obama has read it.  Maybe.