Review of Chris Miller, Putinomics. Power and Money in Resurgent Russia by Jonas Driedger

The weakest part of this strong book is its main title. This is not a “Putinomics” book – in that it does not actually follow the widespread fallacy of attributing all of Russia’s policies to the supposed omnipotence and personal whims of its president. Rather, the book argues that Russia’s political elite – a complex wheel of which Putin is the hub and which this book usually refers to as “the Kremlin” – has pursued a single, persistent, continuous, and deliberate economic policy that has consequentially shaped Russia’s economy.