Description: President Vladimir Putin's Olympic venture put the workings of contemporary Russia on vivid display. The Sochi Olympics were designed to symbolize Russia's return to great power status, but subsequent aggression against Ukraine, large-scale corruption, and the doping scandal have become the true legacies of the games. Putin's style of governance through mega-projects has had deleterious consequences for the country's development. Placing the Sochi games into the larger context of Olympic history, this book examines the political, security, business, ethnic, societal, and international consequences of Putin's political system.
Review Quotes:
Putin's Olympics rightly and repeatedly
reminds us that in the process of creating the Sochi experience, Putin, like his autocratic and
authoritarian predecessors, broke a lot of eggs in order to make this cake.
Catherine A. Schuler, University of Maryland