Putin's Russia
The definitive account of Putin’s rise to power
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3.2 • 6 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Anna Politkovskaya turns her steely gaze on President Putin and his early regime in this explosive book.
From Putin's tyrannical grip on ordinary citizens to rampant corruption in highest ranks of the government, as well as Mafia dealings, scandals in the provinces and the decline of the intelligentsia, Politkovskaya offers a scathing condemnation of the President and his rule, revealing a shocking state of affairs: soldiers dying from malnutrition, parents requiring to bribes to recover their dead sons' bodies and conscripts are being hired out as slaves.
Politkovskaya was an internationally admired, fearless and award-winning journalist who was assassinated in 2006. More relevant and important than ever in today's political landscape, Putin's Russia is both a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of an extraordinary reporter.
'A searing portrait of a country in disarray and of the man at its helm, from the bravest of journalists' New York Times
'Anna Politkovskaya is a heroic journalist' Guardian
'We will continue to learn from her for years' Salman Rushdie
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At a time when many Westerners are ambivalent about Russian President Vladimir Putin, famed war correspondent Politkovskaya (A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya) argues that there is little to admire about the man or the country he has remade in his image. By recounting stories of the winners and losers in today's Russia, Politkovskaya portrays the country as a place where decency is punished, corruption rules and murder is simply a means of getting to and staying at the top. "Putin may be God and Czar in Chechnya, punishing and pardoning, but he is afraid of touching... Mafiosi," Politkovskaya writes. She's an attentive and compassionate storyteller, and the stories she tells are worth reading. The same cannot be said of her simplistic analysis. Politkovskaya's claims that Russia is more corrupt than ever before and that it's reverting to Stalinism, for example, may strike readers as provocative exaggerations. As someone frustrated with the Putin regime and furious about the war in Chechnya, which she argues is an omen of the state's future inhumane treatment of all its citizens, Politkovskaya is passionate and sometimes convincing. But she never adequately explains why, if life under Putin is so awful, 70% of Russian voters chose him for their president in 2004.
