If big complex countries deserve big clear books, then Russia has received its due. In this 500-page volume (plus pictures), a preeminent scholar of Russia, Daniel Treisman, takes the reader on “Russia's journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev.” Aimed at a wide audience, the book accomplishes three goals. It is, above all, a rich historical narrative. The Return's second, refreshingly polemical, goal is to reevaluate Russia's track record by comparing it to countries with similar income levels. Theory building constitutes the book's third, consciously de-prioritized, objective, providing a framework for analyzing the political consequences of economic conditions.

Treisman's volume is best compared with Michael McFaul's Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001): Both works constitute leader-centric studies masterfully fusing historical detail with theoretical discipline. Both affirm cautious optimism regarding Russia's future trajectory, although the rationale for optimism differs. For McFaul, Russia's democracy, however weak at the millennium's threshold, exhibits a path dependence, which, “[e]ven if Putin or his successor succeeds in reestablishing a dictatorship in Russia … suggest[s] that a future authoritarian regime will be short-lived” (p. 364). Ten years later, Treisman's optimism merely allows for the scenario in which Russia confronts the challenges of the “foggy zone” states (p. 346) without becoming a petro-fascist fiasco. That such scenario counts as optimistic says much about the recent writing that Treisman takes to task.

This historical narrative delivers well above promise. More than a journey, Treisman's painstaking research offers a wild ride through Russia's political, economic, social, and geopolitical landscape of the last three decades. Compared to McFaul's qualitative and politics-focused volume, The Return covers a much larger ground and benefits from the judicious use of statistics. Subtle humor and vibrant prose, replete with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, displace social-science jargon. The first four chapters anchor Russia's voyage in the biographical sketches of its presidents.

In explaining the Soviet collapse, Treisman alternates between emphasizing context and contingency: “Economic stagnation, the competition with the West, and the maturation of the post-Stalin generation … created the setting in which Gorbachev could emerge. Yet … Gorbachev's personal characteristics explain the course he chose” (p. 25). Ultimately, the combination of Mikhail Gorbachev's misguided reforms with difficult external conditions led to economic implosion, which, in turn, pushed popular dissatisfaction to the point at which only a violent crackdown might have saved the regime. Why no such crackdown occurred is one of multiple titillating counterfactuals the book dares to explore.

Boris Yeltsin's record is treated with empathy. The economic crisis of the early 1990s and the violent 1993 showdown between the executive and the legislature were largely outside of Yeltsin's control, although his “genuine failures”—the war in Chechnya, corruption, the failure to dismantle the KGB apparatus, and the choice of Vladimir Putin as successor—are judged “significant enough” (p. 77). At the same time, Yeltsin is credited with establishing rapport with Russia's neighboring states and preventing Russia's territorial disintegration as well as a communist comeback. Treisman provokingly deconstructs “the myth of the all powerful oligarchs” (p. 66): Acknowledging the tycoons' role in the loans-for-shares privatization, the author raises doubts about their contribution to Yeltsin's 1996 presidential victory, and, most convincingly, shows that “[i]t is hard to find examples of government policies that served the businessmen's interests after 1996” (p. 69).

Treisman dissects Putin's persona with surgical precision. Venturing beyond the well known, the author speculates about Putin's motivations, discarding images of him as a power-hungry autocrat or a KGB insider. What emerges instead is Putin “the CEO,” who “recognized that—for both individuals and states—in the modern world there could be no power without large amounts of cash” (p. 118). However, even if Putin's rationale for the centralization of power after the 1990s had an economic logic, Treisman argues, the purported benefits of centralization, such as higher state effectiveness and public safety, failed to materialize.

Evaluating Putin's record has triggered heated debates in social sciences (e.g. those of McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and Padma Desai). Against this background, Treisman sensibly charts a middle ground: While Putin is not the Chekist monster and the contrast with the Yeltsin era in terms of democratic backsliding can be easily overdrawn, Putin failed to use constructively the policy leeway provided by favorable economic conditions.

A full chapter covers Chechnya. Structural factors are treated as background facilitators, while the leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev and Yeltsin (the former incompetent and unstable, the latter concerned about the power vacuum and crime around Chechnya) is framed as the driver of the first Chechen war. Treisman's chronicle of the second war and its aftermath spreads culpability across Russia and Chechnya, rejecting Manichean caricatures. The chapter on Russia's foreign relations takes the format of two monologues, the views from Moscow and Washington, both defined by recriminations over the issues of economic aid, Kosovo, Georgia, NATO, and others. Treisman spares no ammunition in criticizing both sides of the Atlantic for hypocrisy and missed opportunities, and the almost theatrical setup of this chapter proves very compelling.

Russia is a country with an unpredictable past, especially when it comes to Western coverage. The excitement of Russia's integration into the “G-8” in 1997 was followed by the “who lost Russia?” debates, after which Russia returned as a dynamic Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) component only to be downgraded to the status of a neo-imperial petrocracy. The final chapter invites the reader to get off this rollercoaster by choosing appropriate benchmarks—middle-income countries and other postcommunist states—to judge Russia's record. The latter is found to be “prosaic” (p. 388): Corruption, democratic deficit, crime, and other problems, while serious in Russia, are typical of middle-income states.

The original formulation of this thesis by Treisman and his coauthor, Andrei Shleifer, in 2003, came under attack for considering the low quality of Russian democracy “normal,” and for ignoring the views of Russians themselves. This chapter powerfully addresses both points. The discussion of democracy is nuanced, acknowledging increasing electoral fraud and pressure on voters, but arguing that in terms of press freedom, comparisons with countries like Yemen are overstretched. The discussion of “what do Russians want?” (p. 377) is fascinating: Based on a variety of poll data, it rejects the idea that Russians have traded freedom for growth, and shows that among those Russians who correctly interpret democracy, the majority wants it and is unhappy about its actual practice. It is interesting that Russians see their (presumably economic) freedom as having increased under Putin, but justice, order, and trust as having declined. While the normalcy argument may strike some readers as apologetic, Treisman's attention to data issues and construct validity is admirable, and will hopefully shift the discussion to a higher ground. Other readers may be frustrated by the indeterminacy of the thesis. However, this critique appears misplaced, since the chapter aims to correct “misperceptions creeping into the discourse” (p. 361), rather than to advance a causal argument.

The most theoretical chapter, “The Logic of Politics,” elaborates the economic underpinnings of Russia's recent trajectory. In doing so, it shakes the conventionally deterministic pillars (history, geography, oil) of Russia's fate. According to Treisman, economic conditions determine the popularity of a given leader, which, in turn, defines the leader's range of possible actions. While the implicit treatment of institutions as malleable and lacking path-dependent effects is potentially problematic, the argument is particularly valuable for a book focused on country leaders, as it provides scope conditions for the “high-contingency” interpretations based on personalities.

Overall, The Return draws on an impressive range of sources, including Russian and Western scholarship, interviews, survey data, and memoirs. In constructing a narrative that is logical, balanced, and heartfelt, the book rehabilitates Russia from the shrill critiques of some observers who compare the country to the Persian Gulf monarchies and its leaders to Hitler and Mussolini. It is time for the cognitive shortcuts, pervasive when it comes to conceptualizing Russia, to yield to common sense. Treisman shows the way.