black square adventures in the post soviet world sophie pinkham

Russia without Putin concludes by assessing the current regime’s prospects, and looks ahead to what the future may hold for the country. Wood also overturns the standard view of Russia’s foreign policy, identifying the fundamental loss of power and influence that has underpinned recent clashes with the West.

The core features of Putinism-a predatory elite presiding over a vastly unequal society-are in fact integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism. Against the idea that Putin represents a return to Soviet authoritarianism, Wood argues that his rule should be seen as a continuation of Yeltsin’s in the 1990s. In the process, he challenges several common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood explores the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. The West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look beyond the Kremlin walls.

But, as Tony Wood argues, this focus on Russia’s president gets in the way of any real understanding of the country. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention both for his supporters and his detractors. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the world, and dominates Western media coverage. It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. And it is the marginal, in all.How the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia It provides an unforgiving portrait of two societies where those marginalized by addiction and illness face a struggle for survival.

The first half of Black Square concerns Pinkham's trips to Russia and (mainly) Ukraine as a worker on various AIDS-prevention programmes. Pinkham is alive to such convolutions, and her awareness, combined with an empathetic but ironic gaze, allows her to get to the heart of the entangled motivations and identities that define this complex country. But there is little in this that will shock Ukrainians, accustomed by now to the fact that oligarchs, ultra-nationalists and populist politicians of various hues are all involved in the same unfathomable machinations, and are rarely what they seem. While Kolomoyskyi appears to have cut ties with the unit relatively swiftly, the very idea of a Jew funding a group with neo-Nazi tendencies at all might seem bizarre to an outsider. What hasn't surprised her on this occasion is the bankrolling of the 'Azov' battalion, an ultranationalist volunteer unit formed to fight separatists and Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, by Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a Jewish-Ukrainian oligarch and politician. 'Nothing was surprising in Ukraine anymore', Sophie Pinkham asserts towards the end of her account of her 'adventures in the post-Soviet world'.

Black square adventures in the post soviet world sophie pinkham