From Sovereigns to Servants

Description

When Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the West slapped crushing sanctions on Russia. Many expected the country’s elite—prominent liberals and global businessmen—to defend their assets and cosmopolitan lifestyles by forcing Putin to stop the war. Instead, liberal-minded officials rewired the economy for war; corporations obeyed new rules; and only a handful resigned or spoke out. Why?

Built on dozens of candid conversations with top Russian officials and businessmen since the mid-2010s, this book dissects their moral reasoning, and how their boundaries of ethical acceptability expanded over time, in line with the expectations of their superiors. Though the Russian upper class retained formal attributes of power, in reality it lost its agency, essentially becoming a mere instrument of governance.

Alexandra Prokopenko illuminates the war’s pivotal moments: Western sanctions, mass mobilisation, the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in 2023. She traces meticulously how competing factions, from technocrats to hawks, rationalised each shock and recalibrated their loyalties. And she sets this process within an inside history of Putin’s regime, analysing the transformation of mindset at individual and sociological levels. These people will continue influencing global politics; we must understand how they think and act.

Reviews

‘If you want to understand why Russian elites backed Putin’s war—a war many of them despise, and one that destroyed the world they once knew—read From Sovereigns to Servants. It is one of those rare books that genuinely helps explain what is happening in Russia today.’ — Ivan Krastev, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna and Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia

‘Prokopenko brings clarity and logic to a subject often shrouded in obscurity. This sobering and illuminating book brings enormous analytical acuity to the rise of Putin’s Russia and to Putin’s iron grip on Russian politics. Essential reading.’ — Michael Kimmage, Director of the Kennan Institute

Author(s)

Alexandra Prokopenko is a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, and has written for the Financial Times. Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she was an adviser at Russia’s central bank (2019–22) and a Russian government press corps journalist, reporting from the Kremlin (2008–17).