Product Description

Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: a country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. This riveting book views the 1990s reform period through the experiences of individual citizens, revealing the changes that have swept Russia and their effect on Russia's age-old ways of thinking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214985 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

Review
"The Russia that Satter depicts in this brave, engaging book cannot be ignored. Darkness at Dawn should be required reading for anyone interested in the post-Soviet state." Christian Caryl, Newsweek "Satter must be commended for saying what a great many people only dare to think." Matthew Brzezinski, Toronto Globe and Mail "Humane and articulate." Raymond Asquith, Spectator "Vivid, impeccably researched and truly frightening... Western policy-makers, especially in Washington, would do well to study these pages." Martin Sieff, United Press International"

About the Author
David Satter, former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times of London, is affiliated with the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute, and the Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author of Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, also available from Yale University Press.

Customer Reviews

Thank you, David. Thank you from honest citizen of Russia.
What can I say? I lived in Russia for 21 years and this book is the only independent and truthful resource of the information about the current situation in Russia. Covering events from the begining of the 90's to the 2003.
David is the only one persuasive person from the West, who really give a damn about ordinary Russians. And, by giving his attention, to ordinary, sometimes, maybe, too ordinary, but honest and simple people in Russia (which anyway represent 90-95% of population, in my opinion), he opens eyes to more global economical and political issues.
If you're interested in what is really going on in this country, buy this book. It will suit anyone, from ordinary Russians, who want to understand something, living in information vacuum mixed with corrupted government propaganda to the high fly foreign investor, who never visited Russia more far then the center of Moscow (Moscow does not represent Russia at all).
I hope, with David, that maybe this book will change something. At least it changed me.
Thank you, David, from the honest people of Russia.

Chilling account of economic rape
In spare and unemotional prose, page after page of this book lays bare the crimes of the bloodsuckers who have raped the old Soviet Union and reduced the citizens of the country to penury. The Western Press adulates these men, celebrating their ability to buy football clubs or huge houses in London, when it should be damning them for their unbelievable greed, heartlessness and rapacity.

Satter's book is one of the best and easiest to read of all the accounts that detail the economic crimes that the oligarchs participated in -- and detail them it does in complete and clear prose.

Having visited Russia and seen some of the consequences of what Satter describes, and had frequent contact with many Russians in a professional capacity I was very impressed with this account for its clarity, even-handedness, lack of sensationalism and diligence in getting to the root of individual events. In short,this book answers many of the questions that an alert visitor to the counrty will ask himself and explains much about the attitude of contemporary Russians to both their own society and to the West.

Excellent overview, but doesn't meet expectations
Overall one of the best books out there regarding the Russian criminal state, however, as it starts by detailing the Kursk submarine disaster you start asking yourself "where is this going". Throughout the book there are some brilliant snippets of information but is does not flow as well as it should and the conclusion is the weakest part. Failings aside, it is well written and captivating.