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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
Overall, I'd give this a 3.5 rating.
It's an easy read on a subject that I was woefully ignorant about. The majority of the book was informative and enlightening, but the Epilogue, Afterward, and Post Script all become too scattered and read like a journal.
It's an easy read on a subject that I was woefully ignorant about. The majority of the book was informative and enlightening, but the Epilogue, Afterward, and Post Script all become too scattered and read like a journal.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Masha Gessen describes Leningrad, birthplace of Putin, as "a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children." -- just in case you were wondering what kind of biography you had signed up for.
Gessen is a Russian, a journalist, a Jew and a lesbian. For a biography written without access (surprise!), she is fair with her interspersing of speculation with facts. As someone with a media diet that consists primarily (solely) of western journalism, I found her descriptions of the Kursk disaster, the Beslan school hostage incident, the Moscow theater siege and Putin in general, to be eye-opening.
Gessen seems to hold a conspiratorial angle in her summary, but as a mother raising children in the heart of Moscow, can you blame her? In regards to Besland and Moscow -- “[d]id this add up to a series of carefully laid plans to strengthen Putin’s position in a country that responded best to the politics of fear?” “Not necessarily, or not quite. . . . One thing is certain: Once the hostage-takings occurred, the government task forces acting under Putin’s direct supervision did everything to ensure that the crises ended as horrifyingly as possible — to justify continued warfare in Chechnya and further crackdowns on the media and the opposition in Russia and, finally, to quell any possible criticism from the West.”
Even with the routine disappearances of journalists and lawyers, it seems that many remain naive about the cruel efficiency of the Kremlin. When a young accountant discovers a $230 million embezzlement scheme (with a trail leading possibly to the President himself), a Russian ex-pat in London offers him exile and safety. The accountant was thirty-six years old and expected justice from his country, so he stayed. As a reward, he was arrested in connection with the very scheme he had tried to expose, was imprisoned in a Moscow jail, denied medical care, and died a year later at the age of thirty-seven.
As of 2011, she described the U.S. media's take on Putin as transformed from "emerging democracy" to "authoritarian tendencies" and finally to "criminal tyranny". To catch up on the latest, her posts can be found here: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/author/masha-gessen/
Gessen is a Russian, a journalist, a Jew and a lesbian. For a biography written without access (surprise!), she is fair with her interspersing of speculation with facts. As someone with a media diet that consists primarily (solely) of western journalism, I found her descriptions of the Kursk disaster, the Beslan school hostage incident, the Moscow theater siege and Putin in general, to be eye-opening.
Gessen seems to hold a conspiratorial angle in her summary, but as a mother raising children in the heart of Moscow, can you blame her? In regards to Besland and Moscow -- “[d]id this add up to a series of carefully laid plans to strengthen Putin’s position in a country that responded best to the politics of fear?” “Not necessarily, or not quite. . . . One thing is certain: Once the hostage-takings occurred, the government task forces acting under Putin’s direct supervision did everything to ensure that the crises ended as horrifyingly as possible — to justify continued warfare in Chechnya and further crackdowns on the media and the opposition in Russia and, finally, to quell any possible criticism from the West.”
Even with the routine disappearances of journalists and lawyers, it seems that many remain naive about the cruel efficiency of the Kremlin. When a young accountant discovers a $230 million embezzlement scheme (with a trail leading possibly to the President himself), a Russian ex-pat in London offers him exile and safety. The accountant was thirty-six years old and expected justice from his country, so he stayed. As a reward, he was arrested in connection with the very scheme he had tried to expose, was imprisoned in a Moscow jail, denied medical care, and died a year later at the age of thirty-seven.
As of 2011, she described the U.S. media's take on Putin as transformed from "emerging democracy" to "authoritarian tendencies" and finally to "criminal tyranny". To catch up on the latest, her posts can be found here: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/author/masha-gessen/
challenging
dark
informative
tense
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
Gessen is an excellent writer - and a great storyteller (I listened, rather read this book). It is part personal story in the age of Putin and part documentation of this horrid man’s rise to to lead Russia. In a way what it shows is how an idiot can rise to lead an idiot nation. Having read hundreds of books on Russian history, I am comfortable saying that this is a country that at every fork in the road for 1000 years has made the wrong decision. Some would say that the US has also done this, but the difference is, as Churchill was supposed to have said “America always makes the correct decision….after trying every possible alternative..”
Het boek geeft een aardig inzicht in de persoon Poetin. Wel was ik soms het spoor bijster als het om gedetailleerde beschrijvingen ging in de St-Peterburgse gemeenteraad of politieke zaken tijdens het
Communisme.
Communisme.
5 stars because of how important and timely this book is.