Download or read book Kremlin Rising written by Peter Baker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-06-07 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin. During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia. But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show how the political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia. With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.
Download or read book Russia Without Putin written by Tony Wood and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention both for his supporters and his detractors. But, as Tony Wood argues, this focus on Russia’s president gets in the way of any real understanding of the country. The West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look beyond the Kremlin walls. In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood explores the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. In the process, he challenges several common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. Against the idea that Putin represents a return to Soviet authoritarianism, Wood argues that his rule should be seen as a continuation of Yeltsin’s in the 1990s. The core features of Putinism—a predatory elite presiding over a vastly unequal society—are in fact integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism. Wood also overturns the standard view of Russia’s foreign policy, identifying the fundamental loss of power and influence that has underpinned recent clashes with the West. Russia without Putin concludes by assessing the current regime’s prospects, and looks ahead to what the future may hold for the country.
Download or read book After Putin s Russia written by Stephen K. Wegren and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009-08-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fifth edition of this book is now available. Now in a thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated edition, this classic text provides the most authoritative and current analysis available of contemporary Russia and the challenges facing Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitri Medvedev. Leading scholars discuss the social, political, and security issues that confronted Putin, as well as his successes and failures in dealing with them. The contributors conclude that Putin's influence will continue to be felt for years to come, not only because he remains powerful in his new post as prime minister but because he laid the groundwork for dealing with the many problems still confronting Russia. Clearly written and organized, this text is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand Russia today.
Download or read book Mr Putin REV written by Fiona Hill and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiona Hill and other U.S. public servants have been recognized as Guardians of the Year in TIME's 2019 Person of the Year issue. From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades. Russia's 8,000 nuclear weapons underscore the huge risks of not understanding who Putin is. Featuring five new chapters, this new edition dispels potentially dangerous misconceptions about Putin and offers a clear-eyed look at his objectives. It presents Putin as a reflection of deeply ingrained Russian ways of thinking as well as his unique personal background and experience. Praise for the first edition: “If you want to begin to understand Russia today, read this book.”—Sir John Scarlett, former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) “For anyone wishing to understand Russia's evolution since the breakup of the Soviet Union and its trajectory since then, the book you hold in your hand is an essential guide.”—John McLaughlin, former deputy director of U.S. Central Intelligence “Of the many biographies of Vladimir Putin that have appeared in recent years, this one is the most useful.”—Foreign Affairs “This is not just another Putin biography. It is a psychological portrait.”—The Financial Times Q: Do you have time to read books? If so, which ones would you recommend? “My goodness, let's see. There's Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy. Insightful.”—Vice President Joseph Biden in Joe Biden: The Rolling Stone Interview.
Download or read book Post Putin written by Herman Pirchner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post Putin is a cutting edge examination of the factors that could contribute to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s departure from political power, the rise of his successor and the policy options available to that new leader.
Download or read book Putin s Kleptocracy written by Karen Dawisha and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia. Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime. Putin’s Kleptocracy is the result of years of research into the KGB and the various Russian crime syndicates. Dawisha’s sources include Stasi archives; Russian insiders; investigative journalists in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, France, and Italy; and Western officials who served in Moscow. Russian journalists wrote part of this story when the Russian media was still free. “Many of them died for this story, and their work has largely been scrubbed from the Internet, and even from Russian libraries,” Dawisha says. “But some of that work remains.”
Download or read book Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft written by Allen Lynch and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interpretive biography of one of Russia's most formidable leaders.
Download or read book The New Autocracy written by Daniel Treisman and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption, fake news, and the "informational autocracy" sustaining Putin in power After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat—at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia's leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a "competitive authoritarian" regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites. The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia's presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an “informational autocracy,” which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia’s foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin’s domestic regime—along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime's challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership’s own capabilities.
Download or read book Russia Before and After Crimea written by Pal Kolsto and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 brought East - West relations to a low. But, by selling the annexation in starkly nationalist terms to grassroots nationalists, Putin's popularity reached record heights. This volume examines the interactions and tensions between state and societal nationalisms before and after the annexation.
Download or read book Does Putin Have to Die written by Ilya Ponomarev and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Story of How Russia Becomes a Democracy after Losing to Ukraine. To understand the significance of this book, Does Putin Have to Die?, you must first understand the significance of the author: Ilya Ponomarev was a member of the Russian Parliament, or State Duma, from 2007–2016. In 2014, he was the only member of the Russian Parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea. However, this was not the first time he survived after opposing Putin. His vote against the annexation of Crimea did, however, lead to him being forced into exile from his own country while he was a sitting member of Parliament. At the time of the annexation of Crimea, Ponomarev predicted it would lead to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. He also vowed at the time that if Russia did invade Ukraine, he would fight on the side of Ukraine. And that’s what he is doing today. Opposing Putin is a risky proposition; for instance, a fellow Russian Parliament member turned dissident, Denis Voronenkov, was on his way to see Ponomarev when he was shot and killed in March 2017 by Russian intelligence. Ponomarev has lived in Kyiv since 2016. As a result of Voronenkov’s murder, he now receives personal protection by the Ukrainian Security Service. And as he said in a recent television interview, “I keep a machine gun by the door.” But if you ask Ponomarev why he joined Ukraine’s armed territorial defense forces, he will reply: "I’m not fighting against Russia, I'm fighting against Putin and Putinism and Russian fascism.” In this book, Ponomarev offers his plan for how the Russian people can purge their country of Putin, Putinism, and dictatorship, and turn it into a democracy.
Download or read book Putin s World written by Angela Stent and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised version that includes an exclusive new chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war, renowned foreign policy expert Angela Stent examines how Putin created a paranoid and polarized world—and increased Russia's status on the global stage. How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West's distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? Putin's World examines the country's turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians' understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions—and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed. This book looks at Russia's key relationships—its downward spiral with the United States, Europe, and NATO; its ties to China, Japan, the Middle East; and with its neighbors, particularly the fraught relationship with Ukraine. Putin's World will help Americans understand how and why the post-Cold War era has given way to a new, more dangerous world, one in which Russia poses a challenge to the United States in every corner of the globe—and one in which Russia has become a toxic and divisive subject in US politics.
Download or read book Putin s People written by Catherine Belton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph "[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic "This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.
Download or read book Russia After Putin written by U. S. Army U.S. Army War College Press and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research was completed in the fall of 2013, which was obviously prior to the recent crisis in Crimea and Ukraine. In 1999, after Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin Prime Minister, the former Russian Secret Service (KGB) agent pledged to create a powerful state at home capable of projecting Russia's influence abroad. He spoke favorably about democracy but soon indicated by his actions that political authority would be concentrated in his hands alone, although he surrounded himself with a medley of supporters: members of the security services and military-collectively known as the Siloviki-business tycoons, high-level government officials, and members of criminal organizations. The state's resurrection-what became known as the Power Vertical-was made possible largely through surging gas and oil revenues and Putin's tight hold over the reins of power. The revenues that they produced, in turn, expanded the urban middle class, and provided jobs for those working in Soviet-era enterprises and entitlements for retirees. In return, Putin enjoyed unprecedented approval in the eyes of most Russians, therefore, after serving two terms as president, he felt comfortable passing the job off to his young assistant-Dmitry Medvedev.
Download or read book Putin s Russia written by Anna Politkovskaya and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was killed while working on an exposé of Chechnya's Russian-backed leader. Long hailed as "a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness" ... [she] made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in Chechnya. More recently, she turned to Vladimir Putin himself, focusing on the multiple threats his regime poses to Russian stability and on the state of terror that in the end cost Politkovskaya her life."--Back cover.
Download or read book Change in Putin s Russia written by Simon Pirani and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Science.
Download or read book Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy written by Bobo Lo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost three years after the first voluntary handover of power in Russian history, this book examines Putin's management of this complex agenda, and considers how Moscow's current approach to international relations resembles and differs from that under Yeltsin. Examines Putin's management of Russia's foreign policy two years after the first voluntary handover of power in Russian history. Considers how Moscow's current approach to international relations resembles and differs from that under Yeltsin. Analyses whether changes in foreign policy have been qualitative, or largely cosmetic. Explores growing talk of a ‘strategic partnership'' with the US and the West. Assesses the realism of such hopes and considers whether we are indeed witnessing a strategic shift in the mentality and conduct of such Russian foreign policy.
Download or read book Putin s Labyrinth written by Steve LeVine and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 2008 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents that bloodshed that has stained Putin's two terms as president, while examining the perplexing question of how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence.
