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neuroneptune's review against another edition
3.0
This was fine, but I honestly expected more. Maybe I was spoiled by Strangers in Their Own Land, but this author failed to foster a satisfying depth of connection with the people she covers, and their community. I wish I'd taken a lot more information and investment away from this.
matttrevithick's review
3.0
A profile of a city called Chelyabinsk through the eyes of its different inhabitants, each chapter from a different perspective. Opening and 'big picture' elements are the most interesting.
abookishaffair's review
4.0
Russia is one of my favorite places to read about whether in fiction or non-fiction. I think it is a fantastically interesting place but much of what I read (fiction or non-fiction) set there always seems to be set in the big cities. What I really liked about "Putin Country" is that the author gets us out into the less-traveled places in Russia to explore how Russians feel about their leader Vladimir Putin.
Drawing on interviews with every day people in Chelyabinsk (a fairly industrial city), Garrels explores the mayhem and the mystique that surrounds Putin and his government. The answers about what she finds are especially interesting in light of what we have going on in our country right now with our own government.
We see people explaining away some of the government corruption and deception that permeates everything from newspapers to television. We get a view of why Putin maintains popularity after so much time in the spotlight. It's fascinating! This book definitely shed some light for me and made me think about things in a different way - something I always appreciate about a good book!
Drawing on interviews with every day people in Chelyabinsk (a fairly industrial city), Garrels explores the mayhem and the mystique that surrounds Putin and his government. The answers about what she finds are especially interesting in light of what we have going on in our country right now with our own government.
We see people explaining away some of the government corruption and deception that permeates everything from newspapers to television. We get a view of why Putin maintains popularity after so much time in the spotlight. It's fascinating! This book definitely shed some light for me and made me think about things in a different way - something I always appreciate about a good book!
debnanceatreaderbuzz's review
4.0
If you are headed to Russia, you couldn't have a better guide than Anne Garrels; Garrels knows the stories in Russia and she can tell them better than anyone else. Russian stories are bleak, with corruption and graft and greed, with alcoholism and despair and desperation in every tale. Russia is stories of repression of free speech, stories of hazing in the military, stories of people exposed to nuclear waste, stories of thwarted hope. Garrels listens to them all and shares them with us, coolly, dispassionately, an eye always there seeking a bit of hopeful news amid the dark.
michaelnlibrarian's review
3.0
I was somewhat disappointed with this book - I thought it a clever idea to look at Russia beyond Moscow using Chelyabinsk, a city near the Ural mountains, where Garrels has spent time since the early 1990s.
I'm not sure who Garrels thought would be her typical reader for this, but I presume it would be someone who already knows something about post-Soviet Russia - nevertheless Garrels inserts quite a bit of contextual description of general Russian developments in the last twenty five years. It makes the reading a bit heavy.
The general idea is to explain Putin's popularity in Russia but also those who don't favor him outside of the capital with stories about different prototypical individuals and families of Chelyabinsk - some of these stories go back to the early 1990s. Some of this seemed a little formulaic, and it also felt like there was some desire to both include as many different examples as possible but also keep the book relatively short (at 225 pages).
I was particularly interested since I have visited Chelyabinsk several times - in 1993 and again in 1998. I lived in nearby Yekaterinburg to the north for eight months in 1997-1998. I thought Chelyabinsk was a surprising choice for a portrait of provincial Russia - I would probably suggest a city in European Russia. I also think Chelyabinsk and its people are exceptionally influenced by its exceptional level of pollution, particularly connected with the secretive Soviet nuclear industry.
For this book to be more successful, I think it would have been helpful to have more comparisons to some of the types of people in Moscow who don't support Putin, but that would have been a different (and longer) book.
Much of life in post-Soviet Russia today isn't very happy, particularly for working people outside of Moscow. Many support Putin, but largely because what they didn't care for the chaos of the 1990s and blamed Yeltsin and the West, particularly the U.S. They support Putin because what other choice is there? Not a very happy read, in other words.
Pet peeve comment: I don't understand how a big like this can be published without a map that shows where the relatively obscure Chelyabinsk is in relationship to Moscow and the rest of the country. It would have also been nice to have a few photographs of what it looked like, but I realize that would take far more effort.
I'm not sure who Garrels thought would be her typical reader for this, but I presume it would be someone who already knows something about post-Soviet Russia - nevertheless Garrels inserts quite a bit of contextual description of general Russian developments in the last twenty five years. It makes the reading a bit heavy.
The general idea is to explain Putin's popularity in Russia but also those who don't favor him outside of the capital with stories about different prototypical individuals and families of Chelyabinsk - some of these stories go back to the early 1990s. Some of this seemed a little formulaic, and it also felt like there was some desire to both include as many different examples as possible but also keep the book relatively short (at 225 pages).
I was particularly interested since I have visited Chelyabinsk several times - in 1993 and again in 1998. I lived in nearby Yekaterinburg to the north for eight months in 1997-1998. I thought Chelyabinsk was a surprising choice for a portrait of provincial Russia - I would probably suggest a city in European Russia. I also think Chelyabinsk and its people are exceptionally influenced by its exceptional level of pollution, particularly connected with the secretive Soviet nuclear industry.
For this book to be more successful, I think it would have been helpful to have more comparisons to some of the types of people in Moscow who don't support Putin, but that would have been a different (and longer) book.
Much of life in post-Soviet Russia today isn't very happy, particularly for working people outside of Moscow. Many support Putin, but largely because what they didn't care for the chaos of the 1990s and blamed Yeltsin and the West, particularly the U.S. They support Putin because what other choice is there? Not a very happy read, in other words.
Pet peeve comment: I don't understand how a big like this can be published without a map that shows where the relatively obscure Chelyabinsk is in relationship to Moscow and the rest of the country. It would have also been nice to have a few photographs of what it looked like, but I realize that would take far more effort.
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