On the Struggle for Power in Russia

A bizarre twenty-four hours exposed the fragility of Vladimir Putin's hold on power

In 2018, I helped re-publish a powerful, mostly forgotten, first-person account of the struggle for power in Russia 100 years prior.

I thought about that book today as I read breaking news from Russia, just as I thought about it watching U.S. news on January 6th, 2021.

Institutions, whether autocratic or democratic, are shockingly fragile things. Democratic values in particular depend on constantly renewed, shared commitment.

Without that commitment, we too could find ourselves subject to the machinations of people like Vladimir Lenin, who in 1918 "found power lying in the streets and simply picked it up."