Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by wrenreads2025
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
4.0
The book shares a lot of context, which makes it less about Putin than I was expecting. I think because she's a journalist, she writes with her nose pressed up close to the display case of artifacts. Journalism provides a great play-by-play witness to events as they unfold.
I concede that I prefer history, even if some of the details are lost by forwarding a narrative, and even if the narrative promotes abstractions at the expense of concrete details. (I trend towards abstractions myself.) Also, this was published in 2012, and much has happened since. Nevertheless, this book is on nearly every list of "books about Putin," so why not start here?
Prologue: The author's experience covering Russian politics before Putin's rule.
Ch 1: The search in 1999 for Yelstin's successor, and the belief that Putin was "moldable."
Ch 2: The months leading up to the election, politics among the inner circle, and Yelstin's decision to resign a few months prior to the election, making Putin the incumbant.
Ch 3: A short biography blending many sources. Notable details for me: Putin got in a lot of physical fights as a child and teen. He was a poor student, but he wanted to be an intelligence (KGB) officer aka a spy. He attended the university, studied hand-to-hand combat, studied German. The KBG did hire him and posted him in Dresden, Germany. He was in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was united. He came home with his wife and two children. They had little wealth and moved back in with his parents.
Ch 4: Putin isn't even mentioned until the last 4 pages of this chapter. Those last pages describe his appointment working with a democratic leader, Anatoly Sobchak, and how Putin's affiliation with the KGB makes this a complex relationship.
Ch 5: The first 15 pages makes no mention of Putin, then we meet a woman who did research on Putin's deals as the mayor's assistant in St. Petersburgh during the early 1990s. He was selling Russian goods for foodstuff that never arrived. So where did the money go?
Ch 6: More detail about Sobchak than Putin here. After Sobchak lost re-election in 1996 as mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin got a job in Moscow as deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Dept. Sobchak later dies under mysterious circumstances.
Ch 7: Some details about the war in Chechnya before the focus of this chapter: the dismantling of independent media outlets. There is a follow-up story of how Putin mishandled his media appearances after a Russian submarine was damaged by one of its own missiles, causing the crew to die.
Ch. 8: Details about manipulated political parties, rigged elections and puppet candidates.
Ch 9: Detailed descriptions of Russians being killed by terrorists, presumably as encouraged by Putin to control public opinion. Also descriptions of poisonings of journalists and political enemies of Putin.
Ch 10: Descriptions of how industries such as oil were manipulated to come under government control with stock options or loans or back taxes and estimates ($40 billion) of Putin's wealth. Also, a few anecdotes of Putin's kleptomania / pleonexia (such as his stealing Kraft's Superbowl ring).
Ch 11: A short chapter detailing a few actions that show Putin shuffling things back to Soviet ideals.
Epilogue: A description of the build up to an election day in Russia and the protests surrounding it. This expresses some hope that the Russian people will eventually revolt and dislodge corrupt leaders. This election was in December 2011.
I concede that I prefer history, even if some of the details are lost by forwarding a narrative, and even if the narrative promotes abstractions at the expense of concrete details. (I trend towards abstractions myself.) Also, this was published in 2012, and much has happened since. Nevertheless, this book is on nearly every list of "books about Putin," so why not start here?
Prologue: The author's experience covering Russian politics before Putin's rule.
Ch 1: The search in 1999 for Yelstin's successor, and the belief that Putin was "moldable."
Ch 2: The months leading up to the election, politics among the inner circle, and Yelstin's decision to resign a few months prior to the election, making Putin the incumbant.
Ch 3: A short biography blending many sources. Notable details for me: Putin got in a lot of physical fights as a child and teen. He was a poor student, but he wanted to be an intelligence (KGB) officer aka a spy. He attended the university, studied hand-to-hand combat, studied German. The KBG did hire him and posted him in Dresden, Germany. He was in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was united. He came home with his wife and two children. They had little wealth and moved back in with his parents.
Ch 4: Putin isn't even mentioned until the last 4 pages of this chapter. Those last pages describe his appointment working with a democratic leader, Anatoly Sobchak, and how Putin's affiliation with the KGB makes this a complex relationship.
Ch 5: The first 15 pages makes no mention of Putin, then we meet a woman who did research on Putin's deals as the mayor's assistant in St. Petersburgh during the early 1990s. He was selling Russian goods for foodstuff that never arrived. So where did the money go?
Ch 6: More detail about Sobchak than Putin here. After Sobchak lost re-election in 1996 as mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin got a job in Moscow as deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Dept. Sobchak later dies under mysterious circumstances.
Ch 7: Some details about the war in Chechnya before the focus of this chapter: the dismantling of independent media outlets. There is a follow-up story of how Putin mishandled his media appearances after a Russian submarine was damaged by one of its own missiles, causing the crew to die.
Ch. 8: Details about manipulated political parties, rigged elections and puppet candidates.
Ch 9: Detailed descriptions of Russians being killed by terrorists, presumably as encouraged by Putin to control public opinion. Also descriptions of poisonings of journalists and political enemies of Putin.
Ch 10: Descriptions of how industries such as oil were manipulated to come under government control with stock options or loans or back taxes and estimates ($40 billion) of Putin's wealth. Also, a few anecdotes of Putin's kleptomania / pleonexia (such as his stealing Kraft's Superbowl ring).
Ch 11: A short chapter detailing a few actions that show Putin shuffling things back to Soviet ideals.
Epilogue: A description of the build up to an election day in Russia and the protests surrounding it. This expresses some hope that the Russian people will eventually revolt and dislodge corrupt leaders. This election was in December 2011.