The tragedy of the Kursk - Crisis management in Putin's Russia

The objective of this article is to reconstruct both the Kursk incident and the reaction to it on the part of the Russian military and political authorities. The article also endeavors to gauge the extent of continuity and change with Sovietera practices in three key areas of contemporary Russia's public institutional life: (1) the organizational behavior and institutional culture of the Russian military; (2) the behavior of Russia's executive political leadership, i.e. President Vladimir Putin; and (3) the media of mass communication. The author argues that reactions to such crises can shed much light on the actual behavioral patterns and operating assumptions of the relevant institutions and leaders.