Russia’s dependence on its oil and gas wealth is much deeper than generally recognized. Since their privatization in the 1990s, a small number of oligarchs have taken control of the economy, and the fates of millions of Russians. Vladimir Putin’s system of personal protection has been successful in keeping peace among these oligarchs and Russia’s industrial heartland—but can it continue?
In Russia’s Addiction, Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes argue that the country’s addiction to oil and gas are a comparable to a physiological compulsion—the country understands that it is destroying itself by continuing down this road, but is unable to stop. They investigate the country’s dependence on oil, and how Putin manages to run his corrupt system, focusing on keeping oligarchs happy and expecting their full support in return. And they ask the important question: What will happen to this system when Putin is gone?

Clifford G. Gaddy, an economist specializing in Russia, is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Center on the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder and senior scientific advisor of the joint Russian-American Center for Research on International Financial and Energy Security, based at Penn State University. Gaddy is the co-author of the recently released second edition of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings, 2015).

Barry W. Ickes is a professor of economics and associate head, Department of Economics, The Pennsylvania State University. Ickes is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; director of the Center for Research on International Financial and Energy Security, Penn State; chair of the Research Committee, New Economic School in Moscow; and president of the American Friends of the New Economic School in Moscow.