The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin and the Decline of Modern Russia

A martyred opposition leader embodies the snuffed-out potential of a free Russia in this labyrinthine debut history. Journalist Fishman recaps the career of Boris Nemtsov, a physicist turned prodemocracy activist who served in Boris Yeltsin’s government and was briefly seen as Yeltsin’s likely successor. Nemtsov, Fishman contends, championed a “peoples’ capitalism” against both communism and the corrupt capitalism of billionaire oligarchs, but the Yeltsin-era program of free-market reforms that Nemtsov spearheaded did little to alleviate Russia’s 1990s economic crises. After initially supporting Putin’s presidency, Nemtsov founded a liberal opposition party and several protest organizations in response to Putin’s growing authoriatrianism; in 2015 he was assassinated by gunmen linked to a Putin ally. Fishman’s richly detailed view of Russian politics unfolds across cabinet meetings, bureaucratic intrigues, and the absurdities of the police state—“ ‘It’s nice that you are so human,’ ” a detective sharing a bottle of cognac with Nemtsov remarks after having ransacked his apartment—and his portraits of political figures are evenhanded: Yeltsin emerges as a smarter, more principled leader than his typical caricature as a shambolic drunk, and even the oligarchs have virtues. Nemtsov himself comes across as an idealistic man overmatched by intractable forces of economic inertia, corruption, and public yearning for a strongman. It’s an intricate, political cautionary tale. (May)