I think this is a particularly interesting book because it is not simply another biography of Putin. Its central argument is that Putin's greatest political achievement has been the manufacture of a false biography and persona—and that Western governments, journalists, businessmen, and even ordinary Russians repeatedly accepted the persona as reality.
The authors' basic proposition is:
Putin did not merely govern Russia; he constructed “Putin” as a political character.
The book treats his biography almost as a KGB “legend”—a deliberately constructed identity designed to conceal the real man and his networks. The authors argue that Putin repeatedly reinvented himself:
the apparently modest KGB bureaucrat;
the liberal-minded reformer of the 1990s;
the strong but pragmatic Russian leader;
the conservative defender of traditional values;
the nationalist and imperial figure;
and finally the supposedly indispensable embodiment of Russia itself.
The authors' provocative point is that these weren't merely changes in political emphasis. They were successive performances. MnogoKnig.com
That explains the title in propria persona: the Tsar himself, personally. Putin has presented himself as synonymous with the Russian state.
Badanin and Rubin are investigative journalists rather than conventional academic biographers. They founded Proekt, the investigative outlet that exposed relationships surrounding the Putin regime. The Russian government subsequently designated Proekt an undesirable organization, and Badanin continued his work from outside Russia. The Harriman Institute
That background matters enormously.
The book is based on the kind of material investigative reporters can accumulate:
interviews with people who knew Putin and his circle;
leaked and documentary evidence;
financial and property records;
old newspaper reports;
memoirs;
photographs and other contemporary evidence;
reconstruction of relationships among Putin's friends, relatives and associates.
Columbia's Harriman Institute describes the book as an attempt to penetrate the inner circle of Putin's friends and family, filling gaps left by official biographies and suppressed Russian reporting. The Harriman Institute
This is probably the book's most interesting idea.
The authors aren't satisfied with saying, "Putin lies."
They ask a more interesting question:
What happens when a political leader manufactures an entire biography and millions of people accept it?
The Putin legend becomes part of the machinery of government.
The book argues that Putin has repeatedly changed the story told about himself depending upon what Russia—and the outside world—needed to hear.
One of the book's strengths is its attention to Putin's private relationships.
The authors argue that understanding Putin's Russia requires understanding:
his family;
friends from his St. Petersburg years;
former KGB associates;
businessmen;
women close to him;
people who manage his wealth;
and the extraordinarily complicated network surrounding his relatives and associates.
This is important because Putin's Russia isn't presented as an impersonal bureaucratic state.
It is closer to a personalized patronage system.
Power flows through relationships.
The authors devote considerable attention to the question of Putin's wealth and the structures through which it is concealed.
The important point isn't simply:
"Putin is extremely wealthy."
That has been alleged for years.
The more interesting question is:
How does a ruler who officially presents himself as modest and relatively austere maintain an enormous network of properties, luxury goods, businesses and financial interests without putting them directly in his name?
The answer, according to the book's reporting, lies in the people around him.
That makes wealth a political network rather than simply a personal fortune.
The book is especially strong when it moves away from Putin as an isolated personality.
Putin's power depends upon a large ecosystem of:
friends → businessmen → officials → relatives → security services → intermediaries → loyalists.
That helps explain why Putin has survived political crises that might have destroyed a more conventional leader.
The regime isn't simply "Putin."
It is Putin plus a network whose interests are tied to his continued rule.
This is where the title's "deceived us all" becomes especially pointed.
The authors aren't saying that Western governments were innocent victims.
Rather, they argue that many Western observers wanted to believe the version of Putin that suited their expectations.
At various times people saw:
a possible democrat;
a pragmatic businessman;
a partner against terrorism;
a modernizer;
someone Russia could "do business with."
The book therefore becomes partly a story about Western self-deception.
Putin supplied the performance.
Others supplied the willingness to believe it.
This is unquestionably its greatest virtue.
The authors have spent years investigating Putin's world through Proekt. The book represents the accumulation of that work rather than a journalist suddenly deciding to write a Putin biography.
That gives it an unusually rich supply of details and connections.
Columbia's description is telling: the authors use anonymous sources, documents, news reports and memoirs to reconstruct Putin's life and circle. GSAS
It is therefore most valuable when it says:
Here is something about Putin that you thought you knew—and here is the evidence suggesting that the story was different.
There have been many books about Putin's foreign policy, ideology and political system.
Fewer have concentrated so intensely on the private machinery behind the public persona.
That makes the book especially useful alongside books such as Catherine Belton's Putin's People.
Belton emphasizes the KGB/security-service network and its takeover of Russian wealth and power.
Badanin and Rubin are more interested in the man, his biography, his family, his intimate circle and the construction of his personal mythology.
The two approaches complement one another.
One of the book's most useful insights is that asking:
"What does Putin really believe?"
may actually be the wrong question.
Putin has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to absorb contradictory political identities.
He can be:
economically liberal in one period;
socially conservative in another;
a friend of the West;
an anti-Western nationalist;
a pragmatic realist;
an ideological imperialist.
The authors' interpretation is that the consistency lies less in the ideology than in the pursuit and preservation of power.
That is a much more interesting interpretation than simply calling Putin a "dictator."
There are several.
This is the biggest qualification.
Badanin and Rubin are openly hostile to Putin.
That doesn't make their reporting false. In fact, their opposition to the regime is part of why they have been able to expose things official Russian journalism cannot.
But it means the reader should distinguish between:
documented fact
and
the authors' interpretation of the fact.
They are investigators with a thesis, not detached academic historians.
Investigative journalism often depends on anonymous sources, particularly when the subject is a dangerous authoritarian regime.
That is understandable.
But it creates a problem for the reader:
How independently can we verify some of the most interesting claims?
When a source says something damaging about Putin or his associates, we have to rely partly upon the journalists' judgment about the source's credibility.
That's a limitation that cannot simply be eliminated.
This is, in my view, its most important intellectual weakness.
Putin clearly matters enormously.
But Russia's transformation cannot be explained entirely by one man's psychology or biography.
Other forces matter:
the collapse of the Soviet Union;
the weakness of Russian institutions;
oligarchic capitalism;
the security services;
nationalism;
the Chechen wars;
oil and gas wealth;
NATO-Russia relations;
Russian imperial traditions;
the weakness of democratic opposition;
and the failures of the Yeltsin period.
If you read Badanin and Rubin alone, you could come away thinking:
Russia became what it is because Putin created it.
The reality is more complicated.
Putin exploited and intensified conditions that already existed.
I like the title, but intellectually I think it overstates the case.
Putin certainly deceived many people.
But not everybody.
There were Russian journalists, dissidents, historians and Western analysts warning about Putin's authoritarianism long before 2022.
The danger was visible particularly after:
the destruction of independent television;
the second Chechen war;
the Yukos affair;
the murder of journalists and opponents;
the invasion of Georgia;
the annexation of Crimea;
and the destruction of meaningful political competition.
So the better formulation would be:
Putin succeeded in deceiving many people for a surprisingly long time.
That's different from deceiving everyone.
As investigative journalism: 9/10
As a biography: 8/10
As an explanation of Putin's psychology: 7/10
As an explanation of modern Russia: 7/10
As a source of new information about Putin's private world: 9/10
Its greatest contribution is not telling us that Putin is authoritarian or corrupt. We already know that.
Its contribution is showing how the Putin persona was constructed, maintained and repeatedly reinvented—and how the network surrounding him made the persona politically useful.
I think it comes down to this:
Putin's greatest creation may not be the Russian political system. It may be the fictional character called "Vladimir Putin."
The character is simultaneously:
ordinary and extraordinary;
modest and immensely wealthy;
traditional and opportunistic;
nationalist and pragmatic;
personally powerful but supposedly merely the servant of Russia;
indispensable to Russia while insisting that Russia is greater than any individual.
The extraordinary thing is that the contradiction itself becomes a source of power.
He doesn't need everyone to believe the same Putin.
He needs different people to believe different Putins.
And that is why I think this book is worth reading even if you have already read several biographies of Putin.
One caveat: because this is a 2025 book and its English-language critical literature is still relatively thin, I would not yet treat every interpretation in it as settled historical judgment. The book's investigative reporting is more valuable than its overarching psychological theory.