Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin with Former White House Russia Expert Andrew Weiss

December 7, 2022·43 min·2 clips

Kremlin focus groups found Russians loved a Nazi-era Soviet spy character, so they dressed Putin like him.

The frame is biographical, but nobody is getting misty about it. Andrew Weiss comes in with Carnegie, RAND, Clinton administration, and Bush administration credentials, then the conversation quickly tightens around Vladimir Putin. The title Accidental Czar matters because the book is trying to explain what Putin wants and clear away the stories that make him easier to misunderstand. Putin's youth gets drawn in hard strokes. The cold open puts him on the wrong side of the tracks, pulled toward trouble, then hooked on a glorified idea of the KGB. Morrell keeps the questions pointed. He is not only asking about Ukraine. He wants to know what Putin's larger goals are and where those goals came from once Putin became Russia's leader. Weiss breaks the answer into a few sturdy parts. First comes regime security. Putin reads grassroots movements, the Arab Spring, and post-Soviet color revolutions as threats to his own grip on power. That fear gives the conversation its edge, especially when the transcript turns to nuclear saber-rattling and the question of what Putin might do if he feels cornered. Then comes the strong state. Weiss says Putin inherited an atrophied Russian state in 2000, after years of devolved power under Yeltsin, and answered with centralization. Power moved back into the Kremlin. Law and individual rights sat below the state's interests. The last piece points at Washington. Weiss describes Putin's nearly two-decade belief that the United States is too overbearing and that the international system should work differently. The tone stays measured. Morrell's questions assume listeners can handle foreign policy context and post-Soviet history. The tension is analytic, not dramatic. Putin is not treated as unknowable, and he is not reduced to one grievance. He comes across as a leader organized around control, sovereignty, and resistance to American power.

As heard by us

A sober, policy-minded account of Putin's worldview, from KGB fascination to regime security and confrontation with U.S.-led power.

Intelligence Matters presents Vladimir Putin through Andrew Weiss's effort to connect biography, mythmaking, and state power. The conversation begins with Putin's troubled youth and fascination with the KGB, then moves to the forces Weiss says have defined his rule: regime…

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Why you'd press play

If you want the logic behind Putin's power, start here.

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