Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy? - Softcover

A fluent, detailed and balanced account of Russian power politics, with a lively emphasis on the Kremlin's onslaught against independent media and stroppy tycoons. (The Economist)

In describing the big picture, Jack achieves a fine balance, criticizing without animosity and making the right allowances for peculiarities of history and culture. (Financial Times)

Gives even experienced Russia-watchers a better perspective on the man and the milieu he operates in. [Jack] writes with care, more like an historian than an anecdote laden, self-important journalist a l'Americaine. (Roger Fontaine, Washington Times)

Lively, fluent and well-informed. (Guardian)

Andrew Jack has been responsible for some of the best coverage of Russian affairs in recent years. Inside Putin's Russia is intelligent, meticulously researched and readable: everything a political biography should be. (Sunday Times)

In the most comprehensive account of Putin's first term in office now in print, Jack presents a judicious account of his achievements: tax reform, balanced budgets, sharply reduced international lending and a booming economy.... As Jack details in several excellent chapters, Putin continued a brutal and ineffective war in Chechnya, acquired de facto control of all major national television networks, turned both houses of parliament into rubber stamps, arbitrarily jailed or exiled political foes, rigged regional elections, arrested outspoken journalists, weakened political parties and increased the role of the FSB (the successor organization to the KGB). (Michael McFaul, Washington Post Book World)

An excellent (and wary) political and economic overview of an often opaque U.S. ally. (Publishers Weekly)

Jack's book is, as the title suggests, an attempt to see Russia from within, to understand it on its own terms. Jack is not sympathetic to the regime, but he is fascinated by the country.... We learn a huge amount about Putin's Russia along the way.... The restraint and the skepticism that run through Jack's book do even more credit to the author now that Putin's credentials are going up in smoke. (Robert Cottrell, New York Review of Books)

Andrew Jack could hardly have picked a better time to come out with a book on Vladimir Putin. It helps contextualize some of the new concerns about Putin's leadership and about whether Russia, once seemingly on the path to democracy, is lurching instead toward dictatorship. Jack puts the president's moves into perspective. (Anna Kuchment, Newsweek International)

A helpful overview of the Putin era since 2000.... Jack, who is Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, gives us a country with 'chill breezes returning from the past,' possibly headed toward a new political Ice Age. (Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Andrew Jack is a journalist for the Financial Times, currently based in London. He was based in Russia from 1998 to 2004, covering the end of the Yeltsin era, the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, and his entire period in office.