In the February 8 & 15, 2016, Issue of the N

For Immediate Release: February 1, 2016 Press Contacts: Natalie Raabe, (212) 286-6591 Molly Erman, (212) 286-7936 Adrea Piazza, (212) 286-4255 THE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Is Ramzan Kadyrov, the Ruler of Chechnya, Out of Control? In the February 8 & 15, 2016, issue of The New Yorker, in “Putin’s Dragon” (p. 72), Joshua Yaffa reports from the Russian republic of Chechnya and investigates whether the country’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, who was personally chosen by Vladimir Putin to keep the peace after two devastating wars against Chechen separatists, has become more than a puppet. Kadyrov, who is thirty-nine, is “a skillful and pop- ular politician, one of the few in modern Russia, where nearly all officials tend to be charmless functionaries,” Yaffa writes. A Russian journalist tells Yaffa, “Kadyrov’s rule rests on propaganda, fear—and real popularity. He is like the Chechen Putin.” As Kadyrov has accrued increasing influence, Moscow, which has poured enormous amounts of money into rebuilding the war-torn region, has come to matter less and less in Chechnya. Since succeeding his father, who was assassinated in 2004, “Kadyrov has wrested power not just from the Russian generals and intelligence officers who once oversaw Chechnya but also from internal rivals hailing from other prominent Chechen clans,” Yaffa writes. “In this, he resembles Putin [but] Kadyrov’s power is even more pronounced. Putin has elimi- nated opponents largely through political trickery and co-optation, reserving outright force for rare occasions. Kadyrov prefers blunter, unmistakably violent means.” Between twenty and thirty thousand men are estimated to serve in military units under Kadyrov’s control. “Kadyrov,” Yaffa writes, “has tried out various personalities: the merciless warrior in fatigues who leads special operations to kill anti-govern- ment rebels; the jolly Caucasus baron who spars with Mike Tyson and shows off his private zoo; the family man and observant Muslim who has banned alcohol, ordered that women wear head scarves in public buildings, and boasts that his six-year-old son has memorized the Koran.” Over the years, Yaffa notes, various enemies of Kadyrov’s have turned up dead, and he investigates possible links between Chechnya and the February, 2015, assassination in Moscow of Boris Nemtsov—the former deputy prime minister, who had become one of Putin’s best-known opponents. The high-profile nature of the murder has led to a flourishing trade in conspiracy theories, Yaffa notes. “Were Kadyrov and his clique involved and, if so, did they act without Putin’s permission, thinking that they would please the President? Or had Putin ordered the hit? Investigators are conspicuously avoiding these questions.” Although Kadyrov remains loyal to Putin, with whom he has had a respectful relationship, one Russian journalist likened him to the Krem- lin’s baby dragon, “which it then has to keep feeding to stop him from setting everything on fire.” How an Art-World Insider Made a Fortune By Being Discreet In “The Bouvier Affair” (p. 62), Sam Knight explores the story of Yves Bouvier, a Swiss ship- per who, unbeknown to virtually the entire international art world, became a multimillionaire art dealer—and was accused by his biggest client of committing fraud. Bouvier started handling art in his late teens, working at his family’s shipping business, Natural Le Coultre. When he took over the business from his father, in 1997, at the age of thirty-four, Bouvier sold off the company’s general moving business and specialized in art. Within a few years, Bouvier was buy- ing and selling pictures on a serious scale, interacting almost solely with other dealers. In 2002, Bouvier met Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. According to Bouvier, the nature of his relationship with Rybolovlev and his then-wife was clear from the beginning. Although he had seldom worked with private clients before, he would be their dealer—and he would also take care of all their art-related logistics. “Major buyers typically build collections through several dealers and auction houses, knowing that they will be charged the maximum the market can bear,” Knight writes. “To protect their interests, many also employ an art adviser or consultant, who works for them and is paid a retainer or a commission—in the region of five per cent—on the works that they acquire.” Very rarely are all these roles performed by one person. “It is not usual,” Bouvier tells Knight. “But it is not forbidden.” Between 2003 and 2007, Bouvier sold the Rus- LINIERS sian six art works. Between 2008 and 2013, he sold him twenty-eight. “He summoned every hunch, every contested inheritance, every paid in- formant, every whispered tax problem gathered from two decades operating inside an art market that had never paid him much attention,” Knight writes. When a deal with the seller was in sight, Bouvier would then agree on his own price with Rybolovlev, which was often tens of millions of dollars higher. In one example discussed by Knight, Bouvier acquired Mark Rothko’s “No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red)” for eighty million dollars—and then sold it to Rybolovlev for a hundred and eighty-nine million. Bouvier stood to make a hundred million dollars in the sale. Rybolovlev, who eventually found out about the price disparities, tells Knight that for twelve years, he had believed that Bouvier was his agent, acting on his behalf in the art market and paid well for his services. The idea that Bouvier might be making a huge margin on each and every painting struck him as a breathtaking con. Based on the margins that they knew about, and a valuation of the collection, Ry- bolovlev’s lawyers have claimed that their client had been ripped off to the tune of $1,049,465,009. When Daniel Katz, a major London dealer, saw the list of works that Bouvier had sold to Rybolovlev and the prices he got for them, he “nearly fell off his chair,” Knight writes. “The Russian has been tucked up to the eyeballs,” Katz says. According to Knight, Bouvier exploited every ambiguity of what is supposed to be a gentlemanly trade. Art shippers Knight spoke with were staggered by what Bouvier had done, though they admitted that there was very little to stop him. “In an unregulated market, the only forces holding people back are cultural norms and long-term commercial rea- son: if I am not trusted by my peers and customers to behave in the way they expect me to, my business will fail,” Knight writes. “Bouvi- er’s calculation was different: in a market powered by insider information, the man who knows everything is king.” For Many Poor Americans, Eviction Is a Way of Life In “Forced Out” (p. 50), an adaptation from the forthcoming book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” Matthew Desmond examines why more Americans than ever are being evicted from their homes. “For decades, social scientists, journalists, and policymakers have focussed on jobs, public assistance, parenting, and mass incarceration as the central problems faced by the American poor, overlooking just how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty,” Desmond writes, adding, “Today, the majority of poor renting families spend more than half their income on housing, and millions of Americans are evicted every year.” To explore the issue, Desmond travels to Milwaukee, a city of fewer than a hundred and five thousand renter households, where landlords legally evict roughly sixteen thousand adults and children each year. “Nearly half of the forced moves of renting families in Milwaukee are ‘informal evictions,’ which, like many rentals, involve no paperwork, and take place in the shadow of the law,” Desmond writes. “Between 2009 and 2011, more than one in eight Mil- waukee renters were displaced involuntarily, whether by formal or informal eviction, landlord foreclosure, or building condemnation.” Des- mond examines the case of a struggling single mother who has been evicted nearly two dozen times in sixteen years—and who was evicted again after getting behind on the rent, days before Christmas. Desmond tells the story of the eviction from both the perspective of the tenant and that of her landlord, who specializes in renting to the black poor in Milwaukee. Following the eviction proceedings, in which the tenant agreed to vacate her apartment before New Year’s Day, her landlord tells her, “if you ever thinking about becoming a landlord, don’t. It’s a bad deal. Get the short end of the stick every time.” Plus: In Comment, George Packer considers how, in a Presidential campaign defined by the margins, direct primaries drive politicians toward the extremes (p. 35); in the Financial Page, James Surowiecki examines why the stock market sees cheap oil as a curse rather than a blessing (p. 40); Elif Batuman explores her conflicted feelings, as a Turkish American, about wearing a head scarf while travelling in modern Turkey (p. 42); in Shouts & Murmurs, Hallie Cantor offers an official agenda for your sick day (p. 49); in an essay, Patricia Marx confronts insomnia by testing a series of high-tech gizmos that promise to deliver a good night’s sleep (p. 56); Carrie Battan listens to Sia’s new pop record, “This Is Acting” (p. 94); Emily Nussbaum watches “American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” created by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (p. 97); Hilton Als considers the life and genius of the d.j., producer, and m.c. Madlib (p. 99); James Wood reads two novels about Americans looking for love in Europe (p. 102); Dan Chiasson reads Frederick Seidel’s new collection of poetry (p.

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