What The Kremlin Thinks

Power Vertical fans out there who are looking for weekend reading could do worse than to print out “What Russia Thinks,” a new collection of essays put out by the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The volume’s editors say they “hope it is a good guide to ‘what the Kremlin thinks’ on three key sets of issues: the Russian political system and the role played in it by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev; the economic crisis and how it affects Russia’s plans for modernization; and Russia’s role in the world in the light of President Medvedev’s call for a new European Security Treaty.”

The contributors are an impressive bunch of well-connected analysts, including Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Fyodor Lukyanov, and Gleb Pavlovsky. I’m particularly looking forward to tucking into “An Ideological Self-Portrait of the Russian Regime” by Leonid Polyakov, a professor at Moscow University’s Higher School of Economics and a leading interpreter of the ideas of Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov.

Luckily, we have a three-day weekend here in Prague.

-- Robert Coalson