Fascism: A Warning

by Madeleine K. Albright

During the Great Depression, America’s economic output declined by one-third. In the 1990s, Russia’s shrank by more than half. Tax revenues dried up, and so, too, foreign investment. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare by hungry shoppers and much of the economy had to do business on a barter basis. The average Russian worked less, got sick more, and died sooner. By decade’s end, seven out of ten lived at or below a subsistence level. Meanwhile, privileged insiders scooped up publicly owned companies at a small fraction of their value, turned the assets to cash, and lodged the profits in offshore accounts. Well-wishers in the West urged perseverance and attributed the crisis to the country’s lack of a democratic tradition. However, on January 1, 2000, a new leader arrived in the Kremlin who blamed every problem on the West and who sought to revive a different tradition—a Russian one. Like several other men profiled in this book, Vladimir Putin inherited power because his predecessors were thought to have fallen short. Like them, he was not expected to last long. Few in the international community were familiar with him, and even in Russia he was not well known. Who was he, and why had Yeltsin sought him out? Traveling to Moscow that same January, I was determined to find answers.