Russia's version of John Pilger or Robert Fisk dissecting the state Putin has helped create. Shocking and moving.

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Product Description

Former KGB spy Vladimir Putin, named Prime Minister of Russia in 1999 and, one year later, President, has been something of a media darling in the West, having successfully marketed himself as an enlightened leader with both feet planted firmly on the Eastern borders of Europe. Anti-establishment journalist and human-rights activist Anna Politkovskaya disagrees strenuously with this point of view. In her new book, she trains her steely gaze on, as she puts at, Putin "without the rapture". From her privileged vantage-point at the heart of Russian current affairs, Politkovskaya reports from behind the scenes, dismantling both Putin the man and Putin the brand name, arguing that he is a power-hungry product of his own history in the security forces and so unable to prevent himself from stifling dissent and other civil liberties at every turn. After centuries of living under tyrants, Politkovskaya argues, this is not what contemporary Russians want. The book is, however, not simply a biography or an analysis of Putin's presidency. Politkovskaya's writing is known for its humanity and its passion, and her focus is on individual human beings and their stories. As she puts it, "my book is jottings made on the margins of life in Russia. For the time being, I cannot analyse that existence. I'm just living and noting what I see." So her readers are treated to expos-s of mafia dealings and scandals in the provinces, of corruption in the military and the judiciary, of the decline of the dissident intelligentsia and concomitant rise of street traders, and of the truth behind the Moscow theatre siege. Other shocking stories fill out an intimate portrait of nascent civil institutions being subverted under the unquestioning eyes of the West.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66033 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Independent, 19 October, 2006
'If you haven't done so yet, read Politkovskaya's books: A Dirty
War and Putin's Russia.'

Good Book Guide
Hard hitting sutff

From the Publisher
A devastating appraisal of the policies of Russia's current head of state by the country's leading radical journalist, admired for her fearless reporting on human-rights issues, especially the wars in Chechnya

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Customer Reviews

Criminal State
The brave Anna Politkovskaya revealed the reality of Russia today in this sad, sometimes horrifying book. After a brief window period of freedom under Yeltsin, Russia has rapidly become a vast swamp of corruption, oppression and deception under Putin. Anna paid with her life for her courageous opposition to the ruling class.

Politkovskaya tells of the trouble and suffering of ordinary people who are humiliated and exploited by the criminal nomenklatura. For example Nina Levurda, who in trying to establish the truth about her son's death in the Chechen War, became a victim of this system that when not cruel, is completely indifferent to the individual. This and other cases are discussed in the chapter My Country's Army And Its Mothers.

In Russia, people imitate the man at the top, thus Putin is the one who shapes Russian society. It is mainly he who is to blame for the brutality and extremism prevalent in the army and the state apparatus. There are sections dealing with war criminals, brutality against privates in the military, government complicity in crime, the corruption in the judiciary, the struggle to survive in places like Kamchatka, and racism against people with a non-Slavic appearance.

Russia's stability is of a monstrous type, where power means everything, few people hold the law in any regard, bribes keep business and the state running, and a free press has almost disappeared. Putin's bureaucrats have taken corruption to new records, unheard of even under Yeltsin or the Communists. As a lieutenant-colonel who never made it to the rank of colonel, he has the mentality of a Soviet secret policeman. The Yukos affair and the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky demonstrate what a vindictive little man Putin is and how he is steering the country towards fascism.

This process of crushing dissent and stifling freedom has been escalating throughout Putin's first presidential term and shows no sign of abating during the second. The Western press has mostly not showed great interest in this slide to oppression in Russia. It is hard not to write Russia off when confronted by the experiences in this book: the deliberate cruelties, the cold indifference and the manipulation of the media. Mercifully there are still people like Lev Ponomarev who are brave enough to speak out. This disturbing book concludes with explanatory notes containing references.

If you read one book on present day Russia - this is it!
Anna Politkovskaya is a hero for all she has done to carry the torch of humanity and civil rights in present day Russia. She has seen the dark under-belly of Putin's Russia through her terrifying experiences in war-torn Chechnya, as a mediator in the Nord Ost siege and lately by being poisoning at the hands of the Russian Security Services whilst en route to Beslan.

Her writing is superbly erudite as one would expect of someone who has been at the cutting edge of Russian journalism through the cataclysmic collapse of the USSR and the tumultuous ninties. She paints a bleak, but not hopeless, picture of how Putin has exploited the war on terror to roll back Russian democracy, freedom of speech and fundamental civil rights. Russia is being systematically regressed into a quasi-dictatorship and so a new menace is rising on the door step of Europe.

Putin is devestatingly deconstructed to reveal a KGB apparachik whose outlook on the world is shaped through the prism of a repressive, but deeply manipulative, secret police mindset.

This is book is a call to all decent and freedom loving people to look beyond the Russia of popular cariciature and see the true state of a long suffering and manipulated people.

Politkovskaya's is a rare voice in present day Russia and she deserves to be heard.

Superb work - essential reading!
Anna Politkovskaya is a hero for all she has done to carry the torch of humanity and civil rights in present day Russia. She has seen the dark under-belly of Putin's Russia through her terrifying experiences in war-torn Chechnya, as a mediator in the Nord Ost siege and lately by being poisoning at the hands of the Russian Security Services whilst en route to Beslan.

Her writing is superbly erudite as one would expect of someone who has been at the cutting edge of Russian journalism through the cataclysmic collapse of the USSR and the tumultuous ninties. She paints a bleak, but not hopeless, picture of how Putin has exploited the war on terror to roll back Russian democracy, freedom of speech and fundamental civil rights. Russia is being systematically regressed into a quasi-dictatorship and so a new menace is rising on the door step of Europe.

Putin is devestatingly deconstructed to reveal a KGB apparachik whose outlook on the world is shaped through the prism of a repressive, but deeply manipulative, secret police mindset.

This is book is a call to all sane and freedom loving people to look beyond the Russia of popular cariciature and see the true state of a long suffering and manipulated people.

Politkovskaya's is a rare voice in present day Russia and she deserves to be heard.