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sophieboddington's review against another edition
5.0
"politics has eaten our children alive."
disclaimer for those with poor media literacy: just because the book is called 'I Love Russia', does not mean this book is in any way attempting to gloss over Russia's current war crimes in Ukraine or elsewhere.
in fact, Elena Kostyuchenko does quite the opposite: these collected writings are incredibly brave, described with profound clarity and sensitivity. she exposes the deep corruption in all levels of Putin's regime from the state-run media to the military industrial complex, encountering extreme hostility from officials and people of all levels as she persevered in her journalistic integrity. travelling to multiple regions in Ukraine including the thickest fighting in Donbas as well as sites of terrorist and ecological atrocities such as Beslan and Norilsk, Kostyuchenko document the brutal actions of Russian soldiers and politicians with fearless honesty. these are not the actions of a Russian-glorifying propagandist. the users who flooded the book with negative reviews before it was even published would do well to consider this.
while extremely bleak reading, I applaud Elena Kostyuchenko's courage in writing 'I Love Russia', and highly recommend reading for any wishing to understand the nation's current state of affairs.
disclaimer for those with poor media literacy: just because the book is called 'I Love Russia', does not mean this book is in any way attempting to gloss over Russia's current war crimes in Ukraine or elsewhere.
in fact, Elena Kostyuchenko does quite the opposite: these collected writings are incredibly brave, described with profound clarity and sensitivity. she exposes the deep corruption in all levels of Putin's regime from the state-run media to the military industrial complex, encountering extreme hostility from officials and people of all levels as she persevered in her journalistic integrity. travelling to multiple regions in Ukraine including the thickest fighting in Donbas as well as sites of terrorist and ecological atrocities such as Beslan and Norilsk, Kostyuchenko document the brutal actions of Russian soldiers and politicians with fearless honesty. these are not the actions of a Russian-glorifying propagandist. the users who flooded the book with negative reviews before it was even published would do well to consider this.
while extremely bleak reading, I applaud Elena Kostyuchenko's courage in writing 'I Love Russia', and highly recommend reading for any wishing to understand the nation's current state of affairs.
tanya_b's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
iakinney's review against another edition
5.0
It was very interesting to read her complex perspective on her own country and the view from a person who went to Ukraine documenting the war and being from Russia. She comes across in these pieces as someone critical of her country but who still loves the people within it. I think this is best read in conjunction with A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya, who was an inspiration for the author and allows one to get a wider scope of critical journalism in Russia from the perspective of Russians (that is available in English). I also think Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich illuminates the Soviet nostalgia present in many of the people that Kostyuchenko interviews, and its a good book in its own right.
dubstepworm3005's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced