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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
I’m baffled by some of the top reviews I’m seeing for this book. Does Gessen dislike Putin? Yes. Does that mean that invalidates the points she makes and events she describes and has pieced together in her book? Decidedly not. Sometimes people are *objectively* bad and do harm to those around them; this is a fair portrayal of a terrible man. Gessen does a really excellent job here not only in presenting Putin and how he rose to power but also in giving context concerning what was happening in Russia at the different junctures of his rise. Those give us a break from reading about him specifically while fleshing out the impact of his covert actions and hypocrisy while also showing the roller coaster that the Russian (and Chechen and Ukrainian etc) people are pulled along on, perpetually zigzagging between hope, indifference, and despair.
It's interesting to see various reviews and why people read this book. I myself added it to my tbr right after the 2016 election, and I thought it was interesting from that perspective. I am also really interested in the author, so I was interested to read about the author's personal experience. The book was more detailed on Russian journalists that I necessarily needed (again, a really interesting and important topic, I just didn't need the extreme granularity here). It would probably be great to have an updated edition.
Shocking book on the Putin regime. A great, of dreadful read.
I put this book down a million times, not due to lack of interest but due to exhaustion from my workload. Once I was actually able to give The Man Without a Face the attention it deserves, though, I sped through it in the past couple of days.
I liked it well enough...until the afterword. Holy shit. That was the craziest thing I have ever read in non-fiction. The afterword alone made this book worth it.
I liked it well enough...until the afterword. Holy shit. That was the craziest thing I have ever read in non-fiction. The afterword alone made this book worth it.
This is fantastic journalistic history. It’s investigative journalism of the post-Soviet era and Putin’s rise through the FSB hierarchy and assent as a KGB apparatchik to be Russia’s president. It’s a great true crime or political page turner. The narrative ease Gessen writes with while describing harrowing events rivals Kapuscinski and the book’s insightfulness and intellectual criticism has echos of the Banality of Evil. Really an exceptional and relevant story of how institutions with weak controls or the loss of key freedoms can create a totalitarian nightmare.
The other angle to Gessen’s book is it punctures the aura of Putin. In many ways his backstory is boring (like his probable adoption) and he’s a mundane KGB guy who just happens to be the most ruthless thug. At other times, Putin seems almost like a petty sociopath when he handles public appearances or stole the Patriot’s owner’s super bowl ring. So in many ways Putin is just a bad dude who exploited a system that was democratically corrupt and eager to reenact the Stalin years—so while this doesn’t diminish how evil or brazen Putin is but it melts the myth that he’s some brilliant strategist.
The other angle to Gessen’s book is it punctures the aura of Putin. In many ways his backstory is boring (like his probable adoption) and he’s a mundane KGB guy who just happens to be the most ruthless thug. At other times, Putin seems almost like a petty sociopath when he handles public appearances or stole the Patriot’s owner’s super bowl ring. So in many ways Putin is just a bad dude who exploited a system that was democratically corrupt and eager to reenact the Stalin years—so while this doesn’t diminish how evil or brazen Putin is but it melts the myth that he’s some brilliant strategist.
Torn between wishing this had come out years ago and opened some eyes in the west a bit earlier and wishing it had come out later to take into account the situation in Ukraine.
I plucked this book off the shelf because with the recent crises in Ukraine, I felt it would behoove me to learn a little more about Vladimir Putin. The image of the man I had absorbed from the media and late-night comedy shows was of a cartoonish autocrat, preening for the sake of the cameras while bilking the Russian state of wealth.
If Masha Gessen is to be believed, that cartoon version of the autocrat I had prancing around in my head is actually fairly close to the truth.
Beginning at the start of Putin's career, Gessen tracks Putin in his early life through his introduction to the KGB and minor offices of international politics, through his unlikely rise to the head of the country and his ultimately enshrinement at the top of the political heap.
Her work filled in a lot of the knowledge gaps I had about Putin as a man, but the principal problem with the work is stated right there on the cover: Putin is a man without a face.
We don't know if he was adopted, we don't really know what he was like as a child, we don't know how deep into the KGB was, we don't know his role in the democratic protests after the fall of the USSR, we don't know how came to be the obvious choice to be elected as President, and now we don't really know what's going on in his head now as he tramples international norms to drum up support for himself domestically.
Gessen does an admirable job trying to weave together a narrative from the various strands available to her. It doesn't take a journalist, though, to recognize that many of the claims she makes are unsubstantiated, she relies heavily on speculation, and she is herself intensely involved in the story.
All this is not to say that I don't believe that she's telling the truth or that the story she's put together does not reflect reality. If anything, I think she's established a rather cogent narrative about what happens when a state like the Soviet Union collapses. It might sound far-fetched that the United States could ever suffer a similar crisis of confidence, but even Rome fell eventually, and this kind of insipid brutalist bureaucrat is precisely the kind of person that knows how to take advantage of a power vacuum.
In any case, I still walk away from the book not quite knowing anything about Putin himself. Perhaps that is the point.
If Masha Gessen is to be believed, that cartoon version of the autocrat I had prancing around in my head is actually fairly close to the truth.
Beginning at the start of Putin's career, Gessen tracks Putin in his early life through his introduction to the KGB and minor offices of international politics, through his unlikely rise to the head of the country and his ultimately enshrinement at the top of the political heap.
Her work filled in a lot of the knowledge gaps I had about Putin as a man, but the principal problem with the work is stated right there on the cover: Putin is a man without a face.
We don't know if he was adopted, we don't really know what he was like as a child, we don't know how deep into the KGB was, we don't know his role in the democratic protests after the fall of the USSR, we don't know how came to be the obvious choice to be elected as President, and now we don't really know what's going on in his head now as he tramples international norms to drum up support for himself domestically.
Gessen does an admirable job trying to weave together a narrative from the various strands available to her. It doesn't take a journalist, though, to recognize that many of the claims she makes are unsubstantiated, she relies heavily on speculation, and she is herself intensely involved in the story.
All this is not to say that I don't believe that she's telling the truth or that the story she's put together does not reflect reality. If anything, I think she's established a rather cogent narrative about what happens when a state like the Soviet Union collapses. It might sound far-fetched that the United States could ever suffer a similar crisis of confidence, but even Rome fell eventually, and this kind of insipid brutalist bureaucrat is precisely the kind of person that knows how to take advantage of a power vacuum.
In any case, I still walk away from the book not quite knowing anything about Putin himself. Perhaps that is the point.