Alexander Baunov, Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre, has recently published an op-ed for The New York Times on his best seller The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended.
Available only in Russian, the first print run came out at the end of January 2023 and disappeared almost immediately to fulfill pre-orders, which exceeded it. Since then, there have been two more print runs in one month — and the last one was fully bought up by bookstores and marketplaces.
"I didn’t set for myself the goal of writing a book about Mr. Putin -writes Baunov- This is not a book about Russia disguised as a book about Spain, Portugal and Greece. Nevertheless, unlike numerous Western works on similar topics, the book is written by an inhabitant of an autocracy for other inhabitants of an autocracy. This links author and readers with a special, almost conspiratorial view of the subject."
The success of the book shows Russians' big interest in their country's future and what comes next. It also seems to serve as pretext to trigger debates on taboo political and social topics, subjects that are difficult to tackle in the context of the regime’s repression of dissent.
Before coming to the EUI, Alexander Baunov worked at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank that was shut down by the authorities in spring 2022.
Read the full piece.
Link to the book.