Russia as a Rhizome State

My review of Alena Ledeneva’s Can Russia Modernize? Sistema, Power Networks, and Informal Governance for Russia Direct, “Sistema: How power works in modern Russia,” In June, Stanislav Belkovsky wrote that Putin “never created a power vertical.” Instead, the Putinist system is a “rhizome” state, a horizontal network “composed of innumerable multiplicities of power centers.” Putin […]