"Power is always personal: any study of a Western democratic leader today reveals that, even in a transparent system with its short periods in office, personalities shape administrations. Democratic leaders often rule through trusted retainers instead of official ministers. In any court, power is as fluid as human personality. It flows hydraulically to and from the source, but its currents constantly change; its entire flow can be redirected, even reversed. In an autocracy, the power is always in flux, as changeable as the moods, relationships and circumstances—personal and political—of one man and his sprawling, teeming domains. All courts work in similar ways. In the twenty-first century, the new autocracies in Russia and China have much in common with that of the tsars, run by tiny, opaque cliques, amassing vast wealth, while linked together through hierarchical client–patron relationships, all at the mercy of the whims of the ruler. In this book, my aim is to follow the invisible, mysterious alchemy of power to answer the essential question of politics, laconically expressed by that maestro of powerplay, Lenin: kto kogo?—who controls whom?"
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simon_Sebag_Montefiore
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Simon Sebag Montefiore
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