A Hard Man for Hard Times: David Clark's Review of Luke Harding's Book, 'Mafia State'

In a review of 'Mafia State', David Clark of the Russia Foundation says that Luke Harding, the Guardian's ex-Moscow correspondent, shows in his book that greed is only one of the adhesives holding the new Russian elite together; the other is fear. The men of power see trouble ahead and simply don't trust Dmitry Medvedev to navigate a way safely through it. Vladimir Putin is the hard man for hard times - yet what worked in the boom years of the Noughties may not be enough in an era of stagnation and decline.