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junderscoreb 's review for:
This is a riveting story about a man who has become a personal fixation of Vladimir Putin, and, in a way, a major player in the backstory to the Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Bill Browder's campaign to convince the US government to punish the Russian government for torturing and murdering a colleague of his led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act. Because his personally punished Russian leaders for human rights abuses, it's perhaps the single piece of American foreign policy most abhorrent to Putin. Browder's account of how it played out, from the early days of the fall of the Soviet Union to the second term of the Obama administration, is fascinating, and even fun, reading.
Browder's writing over the top. You can tell he basically just made up most of the dialogue he had with his colleagues based on how he thought dramatic dialogue should sound. He's also a cringeworthy analyst of "Russians." They have no initiative! They really love babies. Etc. Whatever. This is his personal story, and stuff like that doesn't much detract from it.
His moralistic tone is more problematic. This is a man whose suffering is real. But he's completely blind to the way that his story is about person looting Russia's treasures who ends up getting abused by people more ruthlessly doing the same thing. Browder's job was to gobble up ownership of public assets as they were being converted to private hands. By his own account, he was sometimes buying them at less than one percent of their true value. This is the same pattern by which many of the villains in his book got so rich and powerful.
In one example, Browder finds out that he can buy shares in one Russian business as an even bigger discount by acquiring preferred shares exclusively reserved for the Russian people (you know, the ones who theoretically owned all these assets under communism.) This would be sleazy enough, but Browder's book makes it seem like he achieved this solely through cleverness -- no one else had thought of it! In fact, he set up a series of Russian shell companies to buy the shares, effectively exploiting a gap in a program set up to benefit the Russian people he so sincerely advocates for elsewhere in his narrative.
Browder makes a half-hearted attempt at modesty as he tells his story, but it's clear that he sees himself as the hero of the fight against Vladimir Putin. He certainly played a key role, and this book is revelatory in many ways. But Browder is a kind of cartoon character of the capitalists who sucked Russia dry once communism has fallen. If he's a hero, he's a deeply flawed one at best.
Browder's writing over the top. You can tell he basically just made up most of the dialogue he had with his colleagues based on how he thought dramatic dialogue should sound. He's also a cringeworthy analyst of "Russians." They have no initiative! They really love babies. Etc. Whatever. This is his personal story, and stuff like that doesn't much detract from it.
His moralistic tone is more problematic. This is a man whose suffering is real. But he's completely blind to the way that his story is about person looting Russia's treasures who ends up getting abused by people more ruthlessly doing the same thing. Browder's job was to gobble up ownership of public assets as they were being converted to private hands. By his own account, he was sometimes buying them at less than one percent of their true value. This is the same pattern by which many of the villains in his book got so rich and powerful.
In one example, Browder finds out that he can buy shares in one Russian business as an even bigger discount by acquiring preferred shares exclusively reserved for the Russian people (you know, the ones who theoretically owned all these assets under communism.) This would be sleazy enough, but Browder's book makes it seem like he achieved this solely through cleverness -- no one else had thought of it! In fact, he set up a series of Russian shell companies to buy the shares, effectively exploiting a gap in a program set up to benefit the Russian people he so sincerely advocates for elsewhere in his narrative.
Browder makes a half-hearted attempt at modesty as he tells his story, but it's clear that he sees himself as the hero of the fight against Vladimir Putin. He certainly played a key role, and this book is revelatory in many ways. But Browder is a kind of cartoon character of the capitalists who sucked Russia dry once communism has fallen. If he's a hero, he's a deeply flawed one at best.