Abstract
Aleksandr Golts has a long record of reporting persuasively on military affairs in Russia. His latest book is clear, comprehensive, lively and moreover well flavoured with mordant observations. It also carries a substantiated warning as to the danger for Russia and the outside world of the lack of effective civilian control over the country's armed forces, to say nothing of other power structures. Golts sets out a series of attempts by President Putin at reforming the armed services. Putin comes across as being curiously distant from the basic issues that need to be addressed. He apparently played little part, if any, in the debates during his first two Kremlin terms over how to realize the General Staff's determination, shared by the Ministry of Defence, to preserve a Soviet-style army based on mass mobilization in time of war. Demography alone should have demonstrated that reliance on a general call-up in such...
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