11. Putin 2017d; Putin 2017h; Putin 2017d.
12. Of the two Swedish diplomats, one is dead, and the other one is alive. Hill and Gaddy 2015, 153.
13. Putin 2000a, 41.
14. Ibid., 77.
15. Ibid., 53, 85.
16. Putin 2001, quoted in Hill and Gaddy 2015, 167.
17. Personal information from former official in Putin’s cabinet; Judah 2014a.
18. Putin 2001, quoted in Hill and Gaddy 2015, 167.
19. Kryshtanovskaya and White 2003, 2009; Werning Rivera and Rivera 2006, 2017.
20. On Rotenberg, see Lee Myers 2015; on Roldugin, see Harding 2016b; on Kolbin, see US Department of the Treasury 2015b.
21. Dawisha 2014, 39–59.
22. Putin 2000a, 65–81; Dawisha 2014, 39–59.
23. Dawisha 2014, 63–70.
24. Ibid., 80–91.
25. Cherkezov 2007.
26. On Yeltsin, see Breslauer 1982, 2002; on ponyatie, see Dawisha 2014, 38.
27. On deoffshoreization, see Putin 2013c; on the division of the elite, see Devitt 2017.
28. For the contrarian view, see Satter 2003; and Dunlop 2014. Politkovskaya 2001.
29. Pomerantsev 2014.
30. Putin 2000a, 186, 129.
31. On gosudarstvenost’, see Laqueur 2015, 139.
32. On state administration improvements, see Mereu 2006; for the business index, see World Bank and International Finance Corporation 2017.
33. McFaul 2001, 356, 355.
34. For an empirical study of the deinstitutionalization and personalization of the state, see Baturo and Elkink 2016. For an analysis of this process, see Shevtsova 2005.
35. Åslund 2013, 283–300.
36. Gans-Morse 2017, 74; Hendley 1997, 236.
37. Putin 2000a, 179, 187.
38. Putin 2000b.
39. Solomon 2002; Supreme Court of the Russian Federation n.d.
40. Buchanan 2003; Solomon 2002, 121.
41. Taylor 2006; Gans-Morse 2017, 191.
42. Yasin 2004.
43. Gans-Morse 2017, 9, 86.
44. On the economic courts until 2014, see Hendley 2002; and Hendley et al. 2013; on the merger, see Reevell 2014.
45. Frye 2010, 94.
46. Putin 2015c.
47. Putin 2017e.
48. US Department of the Treasury 2017b.
49. Transparency International 2017.
50. Putin 2000a, 177.
51. Talbott 2002, 412.
52. Bush 2001.
53. Putin 2018a.
54. Putin 2003e, 2017g.
55. Bush 2003; Putin 2004b.
56. Putin 2006a. The Orange Revolution explains why Putin was so hostile to Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Moscow, 2012–2014. McFaul is one of the foremost authorities on revolutions. Why would the State Department send such a specialist to Moscow?! McFaul’s case was hardly helped by his having coedited a book with me about the Orange Revolution (Åslund and McFaul 2006).
57. Quoted in Stent 2014, 147; Putin 2007.
58. NATO 2008.
59. Putin 2008b.
60. Ibid.
61. Levada Center 2017.
62. Putin 2014b.
63. Ibid.
64. On corporate raiding, the best evidence is Alexei Navalny’s long documentary film Chaika of December 2015 (Anti-Corruption Fund 2015), which documents the activities of the sons of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, involving many senior prosecutors. The oldest son, Artem Chaika, was one of the first people to be sanctioned by the US government on the Global Magnitsky list (US Department of the Treasury 2017a). On the Investigative Committee, see Dawisha 2014, 91.
65. BBC 2016; Luzin 2017.
66. Lally 2011.
67. Browder 2015; US Department of the Treasury 2017b, 2017c; Navalny 2015.
68. Putin 2015d.
69. Bazanova et al. 2016.
70. Gans-Morse 2017, 189.
71. Aptekar’ and Sinitsyn 2016.
72. Nazarov 2014.
73. For the survey, see Yeremenko 2017; on Medvedev’s laws, see Lally 2011; for 2016, see Prime 2016.
74. A telling example is Putin 2017e. For the decree see Nielsen 2017; and Putin 2017c. On Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina, see Pipes 1974.
75. Euroactive 2015.
76. McFaul 2006; Galeotti 2016.
77. Galeotti 2016.
78. Nechepurenko 2017.
79. Minchenko 2012.
80. President of Russia, en.kremlin.ru.
81. Putin 2017f.
82. Ibid.
83. Bensinger, Elder, and Schoofs 2017. In the absence of other better information, the Steele dossier is worth taking seriously.
84. Zygar 2016.
THREE Conservative Fiscal and Monetary Policy
1. The share of GDP depends greatly on how transportation and trade are counted (Dabrowski 2015); Guriev and Tsyvinski 2010, 18–20.
2. Gaddy and Ickes 2005.
3. Illarionov 1998a, 1998b.
4. Alesina and Drazen 1991; Drazen and Grilli 1993.
5. Mau and Starodubrovskaya 2001; Gaidar 2004; McKinsey 1999 makes the same argument.
6. The seminal report on the crash of 1998 is Aleksashenko 1999.
7. RECEP 1999.
8. Åslund 2007a, 177.
9. Åslund 1998; Åslund 2007a, 178.
10. CNN Money 1998.
11. Johnson 2000.
12. Lloyd 1998.
13. Åslund 2007a, 179.
14. Schumpeter [1943] 1976.
15. Åslund 2007a, 179.
16. Ibid., 183.
17. Yukos is an oil company, Sibneft is the Siberian oil company, Rusal is Russian Aluminum, and SUEK is Russia’s biggest coal company.
18. Commander and Mumssen 1998; Russian Economic Barometer 2004; Gaddy and Ickes 2002.
19. Gudkov 2015, 54.
20. As stated at the Political Panel at the Gaidar Forum in Moscow, January 14, in which I participated.
21. Putin 2004b.
22. EBRD 2003, 187.
23. Pinto, Drebentsov, and Morozov 1999; Gaddy and Ickes 1998 explain how barter and nonpayments became subsidies; Russian Economic Barometer 2004.
24. BOFIT 2004.
25. Papernaya 2004; Diamond 2002.
26. Fedorov 1999; Shleifer and Treisman 2000.
27. Owen and Robinson 2003, 82–84.
28. Ibid.; Gaidar 2003.
29. On the flat tax, see Ivanova, Keen, and Klemm 2005; and Keen, Kim, and Varsano 2006; on Estonia, see Laar 2002; and Åslund 2002, 228; for the increase in revenues, see Gaidar 2003, 193; quotation in Gorodnichenko, Martinez-Vazquez, and Peter 2009, 1.
30. Federal Tax Service of Russia n.d.; quotation in Gaidar 2003, 197.
31. Owen and Robinson 2003, 34–39; Klerk 2004.
32. Decree of the President of the Russian Federation 2016.
33. Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 2003.
34. Central Bank of the Russian Federation 2018b.
35. Statistically, the Stabilization Fund was still considered part of the international currency and gold reserves of the Central Bank of Russia.
36. Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation 2018b.
37. Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation 2018a.
38. Russian Direct Investment Fund n.d.; US Department of the Treasury 2015b.
39. BOFIT 2018.
40. Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation 2018b; Guriev and Tsyvinski 2010, 20–22.
41. Kar and Freitas 2013, 16.
42. Sokolov and Davydova 2012.
43. Central Bank of the Russian Federation 2018a.
44. Putin 2014b, 2014e.
45. Putin 2015a.
46. Putin 2015b.
47. Central Bank of the Russian Federation 2018b.
48. Bershidsky 2017.
49. Rosstat 2017, 6.
50. Miller 2018.
51. Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition 2017.
52. On increasi
ng drinking, see Shapiro 1995; Brainerd 1998; and Shkolnikov, Andreev, and Maleva 2000; for life expectancy, see World Bank 2018.
53. Guriev and Tsyvinski 2010, 38.
FOUR The Rise of State Capitalism
1. The other major armaments holdings are Rosatom, United Aircraft Corporation, United Shipbuilding Corporation, and Almaz-Antey that produces antiaircraft defense systems. An alternative group would be the transportation giants the Russian Railways, Transneft the oil pipeline company, and Rosseti the Russian Grid.
2. EBRD 2003.
3. Mereminskaya 2016. FAS, “Doklad o sostoyanii konkurentsii v Rossiiskoi Federatsii za 2015 god” [Report on the State of Competition in the Russian Federation in 2015], Moscow: Federal Antimonopoly Service, 2016, cited in Radygin 2018, 12.
4. Own calculations from Westman and Krivoshapko 2017 and United Nations Statistics Division 2017. The Rosstat statistics vary greatly from the UN statistics, especially when it comes to the energy sector.
5. Radygin 2018, 13.
6. Kurlantzick 2016, 42.
7. Radygin 2018, 13; on corporate governance, see Gans-Morse 2017, 189.
8. Nemtsov and Milov 2008, 2010a, 2010b; Nemtsov and Martynyuk 2014; Karen Dawisha 2014; OCCRP 2017.
9. Malkova 2013.
10. Gustafson 2012, 320.
11. Putin 2003c.
12. Personal interview with Khodorkovsky, Washington, DC, October 9, 2003.
13. Baker and Glasser 2005, 282; Lee Myers 2015, 220–221; Putin 2003b; Khodorkovsky interview.
14. Fortescue 2006, 121–148.
15. Ibid, 148.
16. Gustafson 2012, 345.
17. Arvelund 2004; Putin quoted in Gustafson 2012, 346.
18. Putin 2003a.
19. Putin 2003d; Interfax, Tashkent, June 17, 2004; Belton 2004.
20. Personal conversations with investment bankers and fund managers.
21. Blasi, Kroumova, and Kruse 1997; Chubais 1999, chap. 1.
22. Vernikov 2012.
23. Putin 2006b.
24. On Ivanov, see Putin 2000a, 200–201; on Chemezov, see Dawisha 2014, 52, 54.
25. Volkov 2008.
26. On state corporations as nongovernmental organizations, see Solov’ev 2009; as benefiting the president, see Kommersant, 2008; Volkov 2008.
27. Volkov 2008.
28. Ibid.
29. Medvedev 2009b, 2009a.
30. On Medvedev’s actions in 2011, see Meyer 2011.
31. On Abramovich acquiring a majority in Sibneft, see Kokh 1998, 121, 123, 126; Freeland 2000; and Hoffman 2002. On Gazprom’s purchase, see Ostrovsky 2005; on the price, see Belton 2005: “While Sibneft’s price tag appears cheap compared to valuations of Western majors, the deal looks like an expensive buy for the state. . . . BP paid $1.80 per barrel for half of Tyumen Oil, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.” On Abramovich as one of five, see Åslund 2007a, 200.
32. Fortescue 2006, 146.
33. Gazprom 2017a; Troika Dialog 2012, 5.
34. Åslund 1995, 159; Stern 2005.
35. Åslund 2007a, 140–142; Klebnikov 2000, 134–135.
36. Hoffman 2000; Goldman 2008, 104–105.
37. Private conversation with Chernomyrdin in the Russian Embassy in Kyiv, May 2006.
38. On Putin’s appointments in 2001, see Gustafson 2012, 267. Federov was a member of Gazprom’s board as an independent director; Gazprom 2017c. Quotation in Economist 2013.
39. On the board, see Gazprom 2017b. In January 1992, Zubkov became Putin’s deputy when Putin was chairman of the Committee for Foreign Relations of the Mayor’s Office in St. Petersburg. Zubkov was also a founding member of Putin’s exclusive Ozero dacha cooperative in St. Petersburg. He was involved in two of Putin’s major corruption scandals in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s: the food import scandal and the takeover of the prime hotel in St. Petersburg, Grand Hotel Europe (Dawisha 2014, 81, 83–84; Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky 2008, 255). On Bergmann, see Gazprom 2011.
40. For natural gas figures, see Gazprom 2017d; for 2017 figures, see TASS 2018; on LNG, see Panin 2014.
41. Gazprom 2017e.
42. On free trade of Gazprom stocks, see Putin 2005b; for recent prices, see symbol OGZD:LI.
43. As of August 3, 2018 (OGZD:LI); JP Morgan Cazenove 2015, 5, 29.
44. Nemtsov and Milov 2008.
45. Balmaceda 1998; Nemtsov and Milov 2008.
46. Troika Dialog 2012, 26–27.
47. Russia Market Daily 2012; Gazprom 2014; personal conversation, London, 2012.
48. Latynina 2017; Kleiner 2005, 40–41.
49. Podobedova 2015; Novaya Gazeta 2009b.
50. Novikov 2015.
51. For perceptions of Miller, see Farchy 2015; for Forbes quotation, see Malkova 2013; Economist 2013, 59.
52. Hedenskog and Larsson 2007, 46.
53. Grey et al. 2014.
54. European Commission 2015c.
55. Ibid.; Hedenskog and Larsson 2007, 46.
56. European Commission 2015a, 2017.
57. European Commission 2018.
58. Balmaceda 2004, 2013; on Russia’s raising of gas price, see Burmistrova and Zinets 2014.
59. Naftogaz Ukrainy 2017; Olearchyk and Foy 2018.
60. US Department of the Treasury 2014b; Financial Times 2015.
61. Gustafson 2012, 195.
62. Ibid., 272–318; Putin 2010a, 202; on Sechin in GRU, see Kramer 2014b; on Sechin at Rosneft, see Malkova 2013.
63. BP 2013.
64. Putin 2012e.
65. On Yevtushenkov’s arrest, see Weaver 2014; on the purchase of Bashneft, see Kobzeva and Korsynskaya 2016.
66. On Sistema’s stock plunge, see Reuters 2017b; for Forbes quotation, see Foy 2017; investor quoted in Rudnitsky 2017.
67. Peskov quoted in TASS 2016; Sechin and Putin quoted in Putin 2016e.
68. On financing, see RBC 2016; on Bank Otkritie, see Devitt and Korsunskaya 2016; and Bershidsky 2017; on the Order of Friendship, see Zhigalkin 2017.
69. On shell companies, see Latynina 2017; and Stanovaya 2017; on Rosneft’s announcement, see McFarlane and Said 2017.
70. On the sale, see Foy and Hume 2017; on the cancellation, see Guo, Mazneva, and Chen 2018.
71. On Sechin’s access to Putin, see Dawisha 2014, 84; Rosneft n.d., “Board of Directors.”
72. CEIC 2013; for Exxon stock, see symbol XOM:US; Rosneft 2017.
73. For $96 billion and Sechin’s remark, see Galouchko and Bierman 2014; market capitalization as of May 11, 2018, stock symbol ROSN:LI; for Yukos’s worth, see Åslund 2007b.
74. For $40 billion, see Galouchko and Bierman 2014; for Sechin’s request, see Zakvasin 2015.
75. Rosneft’s Annual Report 2014 makes the deal-signing process clear: “Rosneft and Pirelli Expand Cooperation in Sales and Marketing: the companies signed a Memorandum of understanding denoting the spheres of cooperation within joint marketing projects in the Rosneft retail network. The signature ceremony was led by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin” (Rosneft 2014, 8); “The long-term development program is developed in accordance with the assignment given by the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin on 27.12.2013 No. p-3086” (ibid., 22); “August 9, 2014, the world’s most northern exploration well Universitetskaya-1 began to be drilled in the Vostochno-Prinovozemelskiy-1 License Block of the Kara Sea. The go-ahead to the operations was given by President Vladimir Putin during the teleconference with the Company Management Board Chairman Igor Sechin” (ibid., 68). For Forbes’s claim, see Malkova 2013; in order to be able to do so, Sechin insists on using official blue lights, although they are supposed to be reserved for top state officials.
76. On the Rosneft deal with Venezuela, see Reuters 2015; on arms deals, see Amsterdam 2009; on sanctions, see US Department of the Treasury 2014c.
77. VEB 2017b.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Bloomberg 2017; for Gorkov, see VEB 2017b; on Buryakov, see Radio Free Euro
pe/Radio Liberty 2015; on recruiting Page, see Zavadski 2017.
81. VEB 2018.
82. VEB 2017a.
83. On the two projects, see Kramer 2008; on the National Welfare Fund bailout, see Sokolov and Davydova 2012; and Novaya Gazeta 2009c.
84. On Sochi Olympics funding, see Nemtsov and Martynyuk 2014; on National Welfare Fund money, see Birman 2015.
85. On Akhmetov, see Kuzio 2010. In the first half of 2017, VEB’s subsidiary Prominvestbank made a net loss of $1.8 billion; Kolesnichenko 2017.
86. On the discussion of a capital infusion, see Bush 2015; on the reduction, see Papchenkova, Korsunskaya, and Kobzeva 2016.
87. For sanctions, see US Department of the Treasury 2014c; on Kushner, see Filipov et al. 2017.
88. For Putin forming Rostec at the request of Chemezov, see Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky 2008, 221; Dawisha 2014, 54; and Lee Myers 2015, 260. On their many meetings, see Putin 2015e, 2016d, 2016b, 2017a.
89. Rostec 2017b.
90. Rostec 2017c.
91. Rostec 2017a.
92. Ibid.
93. Rostec 2017d; on annual meetings with Putin, see Putin 2014d, 2015e, 2016b; on meetings with Medvedev, see Medvedev 2010, 2011.
94. Putin 2017a, 2016b.
95. Buckley and Ostrovsky 2006.
96. US Department of the Treasury 2014b, 2014d.
97. Primakov and Lazareva 2013, 10.
98. Yergin and Stanislaw 1998.
99. Yakunin was sanctioned by the United States on March 20, 2014, as one of Putin’s cronies. US Department of the Treasury 2014a.
100. Buckley 2017.
101. As evidenced by Nemtsov and Milov 2008, 2010a, 2010b; and Dawisha 2014.
102. Putin 2017b. Rosneftegaz is the government holding company of Rosneft.
103. In 2013, Gazprom CEO Miller officially earned $25 million (RBC 2015); on secret salaries, see Sharkov 2015.
104. Pipes 1974.
FIVE The Expansion of Crony Capitalism
1. On Rybkin’s disappearance, see Lee Myers 2004; for the press conference, see Lee Myers, Becker, and Yardley 2014; quotation in Dawisha 2015, 115.
2. Detailed by Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky 2008 and Dawisha 2014.
3. Nemtsov and Milov 2010a, 2010b.
4. Dawisha 2014, 63–80, 94–99; Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky 2008.
5. Interview with Illarionov, July 17, 2017; on Rosspritprom, see Yaffa 2017.
6. On Putin’s close friends, see Albats 2012. For Timchenko and Rotenberg, see Nemtsov and Milov 2010a, 2010b; Dawisha 2014; and Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky 2008.
7. US Department of the Treasury 2014a; European Union 2018.
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