Recent Books
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protect the property rights or political
freedoms o potential challengers.
²¬¥² Þ¬¶¢£ßMiddle East
John Waterbury
The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s
Destruction of Its Christian Minorities,
1894–1924
BY BENNY MORRIS AND DROR
ZE’EVI. Harvard University Press,
2019, 672 pp.First Raise a Flag: How South Sudan Won
the Longest War but Lost the Peace
BY PETER MARTELL. Hurst, 2018,
320 pp.T
hese two books are gut-wrenching
chronicles o human depravity
that show how ordinary people
can become barbarians. Both describe,
in numbing detail, decades o pillage,
rape, starvation, and torture. Morris
and Ze’evi tie together the three
waves o killing that swept across the
Christian population o Anatolia (in
modern-day Turkey) from 1894 to 1924.
First, the Ottoman Empire, under
Sultan Abdulhamid II, massacred
hundreds o thousands o Armenians.
Then, in 1914, the Young Turks, who had
marginalized the sultan after the revolu-
tion o 1908, launched their own, far
larger Armenian genocide. Finally, after
1919, the Republicans under Kemal
Ataturk began killing and deporting the
remaining Christians, many o whom
were Greek. Over the three decades,whose emergence has signi¿cant strategic
implications, including the introduction
o theological concepts into Russian
military planning.
£¬ ² Ϥ£¢ß
Putin’s Counterrevolution
BY SERGEY ALEKSASHENKO.
Brookings Institution Press, 2018, 347 pp.
Democratic institutions, even weak
ones, do not wither and die overnight.
Leaders bent on undermining free
elections or co-opting the judiciary
often require years o methodical
plotting and legislative chicanery to
achieve their goals. And such changes
often unfold far from the eye o the
general public. In this comprehensive
historical study, Aleksashenko does a
great service by documenting the
decades-long institutional erosion and
consolidation o authoritarian rule in
Putin-era Russia. The author hits his
stride in his discussion o the state’s
intervention in the economy. Many
previous works have described the
consequences o the Kremlin’s takeover
o the lucrative oil industry. But the
state’s hand has extended into many
other sectors, as well. Through detailed
interviews and careful work with
primary sources, Aleksashenko shows
how the Putin regime has taken on
oligarchs, pressured international
investors, built gigantic state-owned
enterprises, and bailed out failing
¿rms. The book oers a de¿nitive
account o how, since the late 1990s, the
balance o power in Russia has shifted
decisively in favor o government
ocials over private ¿rms. The regime’s
economic dominance helps explain its
lack o interest in reforms that would