In Riding the Tiger, Leon Aron, an acclaimed Russian studies scholar and a Moscow native who was sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin's regime, chronicles the transformation of Russian politics and society under Putin. Through hundreds of Russian-language sources, Dr. Aron shows how Putin uses militarist propaganda and sanitized revisionist images of World War II, Stalin, and the Soviet Union to forge a nationalist and loyal core of his regime's support. And the "new Russia" suddenly looks a lot like the old USSR.Dr. Aron's bold, expert analysis of Russian political culture under Putin helps us better understand Russia's revanchist tendencies, its invasion of Ukraine, and the perilous road ahead.

Leon Aron, who was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee in 1978, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He studies Russian domestic and foreign policy, US-Russia relations, and the economic, social, and cultural aspects of Russia's post-Soviet evolution. From 2014 to 2020, Dr. Aron was a governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the operations of several international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Dr. Aron is also a prolific writer and editor, and his books include "Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991" (Yale University Press, 2012), in which he details and analyzes the intellectual and moral revolution that precipitated the end of the Soviet Union; "Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006" (AEI Press, 2007); and the first in-depth biography of Boris Yeltsin, "Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life" (St. Martin's Press, 2000).