Foreign Affairs - 11.2019 - 12.2019

(Michael S) #1
Recent Books

November/December 2019 211

Eastern Europe and Former
Soviet Republics

Maria Lipman


We Need to Talk About Putin: How the
West Gets Him Wrong
BY MARK GALEOTTI. Ebury Press,
2019, 160 pp.

G


aleotti is an established authority
on Russia’s criminal underworld
and on the country’s formidable
security service and other uniformed
agencies. His new book, however, follows
a trend among studies o‰ Russia by
seeking to explain what President Vladi-
mir Putin really stands for. But unlike
most such accounts, Galeotti’s manages to
completely overturn the conventional
wisdom. The result is easily the shrewdest
and most insightful analysis yet o‰ Putin’s
policymaking. Putin is not a “cool genius,”
Galeotti writes; rather, he is an opportun-
ist without a master plan. His system is
an “adhocracy,” in which lackeys do not
receive direct instructions but instead rely
on hints and guesses to determine what
will please the boss. Putin is not a cham-
pion o“ conservatism; indeed, he holds no
particular philosophy. There is one thing,
however, Putin feels strongly about on a
gut level: he is a patriot, committed to
making outsiders treat Russia as a great
power. Putin is not a kleptocrat, says
Galeotti: wealth may be important to him,
but the thing that drives him is power, not
money. Some o“ Galeotti’s insights may
not be new to close observers o‰ Russia.
But nonexperts will appreciate his brevity
and his reader-friendly style.

occurs just prior to the 1976 military coup
that launched the “Dirty War,” a period
o“ repression that would end up killing
thousands o“ Argentines. Naishtat
focuses on the silence and complicity o“
average citizens more interested in
safeguarding their own modest, quiet
lives than in resisting the atrocities
visited on their neighbors and peers by
right-wing death squads, which were
already “disappearing” opponents even
before the coup. The œlm is dedicated to
a recently deceased legal defender o“
political prisoners. The protagonist is
Claudio, an aloof, rather haughty lawyer,
well respected in his community. He
gradually becomes aware o“ the horrors
occurring all around him, but he does not
get involved. Claudio’s moral center
collapses utterly when he decides to make
quick proœts from the empty properties
o“ victims o“ state terrorism. Naishtat
skillfully mixes mundane scenes o“ daily
life (birthday parties, tennis matches)
with noir atmospherics and absurdist
comedy. Could it happen here? The œlm
reminds viewers everywhere that, indeed,
it did happen in Argentina and that it
was all too easy for many Argentines to
avert their gaze from the state-sponsored
violence o“ the Dirty War.

25_Books_pp_Blues.indd 211 9/23/19 3:16 PM

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