How can we define the political regime established by Vladimir Putin, described as “the most powerful person in the world” by Forbes in 2013? What are the social and political consequences arising from his “dictatorship of the law”? And, above all, how do the political, cultural and institutional legacies of Russia’s past continue to shape its society and political behaviour? Access to primary sources in Russian and strong field research experience help the author explain the unfamiliar internal dynamics of Russia, a country which is a main actor on many stages of contemporary geopolitics: the war on terrorism in Chechnya, the clash with Ukraine over the annexation/invasion of Crimea, cyberwarfare with Trump’s America, spying in Britain.

Mara Morini teaches Politics of Eastern Europe, Comparative Politics and Political Science at the University of Genoa. She was an OSCE-ODIHR election observer at the parliamentary (2003) and presidential (2018) elections in Saint Petersburg, Murmansk and Kazan. She has been a visiting professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the High School of Economics in Moscow.