Is Putinism the Russian Norm or an Aberration?

Michael McFaul is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a professor of political science, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He served in the Obama administration as senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council and as US ambassador in Moscow. Parts of this essay are adapted from his book From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).