'Strategic culture' means the underlying cultural assumptions about threats and options that informs a nation's specific strategic choices, and Russia's has been strikingly continuous for centuries. As I discuss, it reflects the underlying circumstances and challenges of the country, and while not a straightjacket -- Gorbachev and Brezhnev were products of the same culture -- it helps explain Putin's own decisions.

The entry page for the Conducttr online crisis exercise on Russian sabotage I mentioned is @ https://www.conducttr.com/russian-sabotage

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It's impossible to avoid talking about the potential implications of Donald Trump's election, even as its difficult to know for sure what he intends and almost as hard to say anything that hasn't already been said. I have a go, though, after considering Putin's hour-long speech and epic (or exhausting) 3-hour Q&A on the 'polyphonic' world order at Valdai.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here.

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I use reviews of three books to consider the risks and limitations of personalistic explanations of power under Putin, and whether a medieval concept of clan and family actually makes more sense...

The books are:

• THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN by GIULIANO DA EMPOLI (Pushkin Press)
• THE KREMLIN’S NOOSE. PUTIN’S BITTER FEUD WITH THE OLIGARCH WHO MADE HIM RULER OF RUSSIA by AMY KNIGHT (Icon Books and Cornell UP)
• THE RULING FAMILIES OF RUS. CLAN, FAMILY AND KINGDOM, by CHRISTIAN RAFFENSPERGER and DONALD OSTROWSKI (Reaktion Books)

The Inozemtsev piece I mention is here, and my review of the play Patriots is here.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here.

Support the show