An electrifying and timely book, by leading Russian expert Richard Lourie, that explores Putin's failures and whether Trump's election gives Putin extraordinarily dangerous opportunities in our mad new world. "A master chronicler of modern Russia. Drawing on his own expertise, Lourie paints a convincing portrait of a ruthless authoritarian leader headed toward failure. This book serves as an essential primer on Putin and, by extension, Russia."—Publishers Weekly For reasons that are made clear in this book, Putin’s Russia will collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991. The only questions are when, how violently, and with how much peril for the world. The U.S. election complicates everything, including: · Putin’s next land grab · Exploitations of the Arctic · Cyber-espionage · Putin and China ...and many more crucial topics. Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash is an essential read for everybody bewildered and dismayed by the new world order.
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.
An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing, little-known story of an American effort to save the newly formed Soviet Union from disaster After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine—and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent. In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover’s brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years, a small, daring band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory. It was the largest humanitarian operation in history—preventing the loss of countless lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the communist state. Now, almost a hundred years later, few in either America or Russia have heard of the ARA. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity. In America, fanatical anti-communism would eclipse this historic cooperation with the Soviet Union. Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance, and features some of the great historical figures of the twentieth century. In a time of cynicism and despair about the world’s ability to confront international crises, The Russian Job is a riveting account of a cooperative effort unmatched before or since.
In 1991, a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union and enjoyed one of the greatest transfers of wealth ever seen, claiming ownership of some of the most valuable petroleum, natural gas and metal deposits in the world. By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires.
This title investigates Vladimir Putin's war for control of Russia's vast oil reserves, in particular Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil firm, Yukos. "Putin's Oil" investigates the complex world of Kremlin politics, including conspiracies and conspiracy theories, allegations that Roman Abramovitch plotted with Putin to destroy Khodorkovsky, suspicions of betrayal and double agents in the Kremlin and in Yukos, murder charges against Khodorkovsky's partners, and the KGB defector who claims they were carried out by Kremlin agents. After the mysterious death in a helicopter crash of the Englishman who had taken over Yukos, the company's war against the Kremlin is now being waged by a troika of mild mannered Britons, pursued by Interpol arrest warrants and Moscow's fury. Khodorkovsky remains in a penal camp in far Eastern Siberia. Martin Sixsmith, former BBC Moscow Correspondent, has gained unprecedented access to many of the players in the drama. The resulting book is both a thriller and an analysis of the defining moments of Putin's presidency and their ongoing impact in Russian and world politics.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
Seemingly shy, Andrei Sakharov was in fact a man of three great passions. His passion for physics ultimately lead him to create the Soviet H-Bomb, making the USSR a super power. But he rejected all the position and prestige his inventions had brought him in the name of a greater passion — for justice. And yielding nothing to these two passions was his passion for human rights activist Elena Bonner, their love story one of the great romances of our time. This book tells the story of the man, his passions, and the time and place where they all played out. “As Richard Lourie’s new, subtle and revealing biography of Sakharov demonstrates... [Sakharov] ranks with Nelson Mandela as a person who helped guide his country to democracy, changing himself in the process. One of the strengths of Lourie’s biography is his description and analysis of how this transition occurred... a fascinating account of Sakharov... [Lourie’s] analysis of [Sakharov’s] complicated political journey seems authentic and immensely revealing.” — Loren Graham, The New York Times “A vivid portrait of [Sakharov,] this moral and intellectual giant... Lourie has written a highly intelligent and exceptionally readable book. He not only captures his protagonist admirably but exhibits a fine feel for the social and political backdrop as well as for the peculiar mixture of fearful servility and courageous generosity of the Russian people. Among other things, he vividly brings to life how the Communist regime constrained scientists, sometimes even arresting and murdering them, while those who survived persevered in their work to achieve remarkable results.” — Aleksa Djilas,Commentary Magazine “Lourie does full justice to a life that could not be more engrossing. The socially introverted son of Moscow intelligentsia, Andrei Sakharov became a star physics pupil, then chief architect of the Soviet Union’s first thermonuclear device, and later on a dissident and target of KGB ire — and finally the moral conscience of a democratically awakening Russia... The evolution from a politically passive scientist to a lonely figure holding sidewalk vigils outside kangaroo courtrooms is almost unfathomable for a non-Russian. Lourie, however, makes it comprehensible, not least by painting with an artist’s spare, deft strokes this transcendent figure into the history of his day.” — Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs “Richard Lourie is ideally placed to write the first full biography of this remarkable man. He was able to interview Sakharov and many of his colleagues. He has translated Sakharov’s memoirs, and often uses direct speech drawn from them to take us behind the scenes without giving rise to the usual suspicion of novelistic invention. This makes for an engagingly readable book... Lourie’s appraisal of Sakharov as a man is scrupulously balanced, with as much emphasis on his obstinacy as on his compassion... The book conveys both the elation of scientific work, the intense love between Sakharov and his second wife, and the bewildering nature of human courage.” — Elaine Feinstein, The Telegraph “The inventor of the Soviet H-bomb, [Sakharov] was in the forefront of the post-war breakthrough in thermonuclear physics that led to the creation of atomic energy. Yet he also stood, heroically at times, in the vanguard of the movement for human rights in the Soviet Union. Richard Lourie tells both these stories in this first full-length biography of the physicist and dissident. Lourie has benefited from the recent publication of the KGB files on Sakharov. He also knew the man himself, whose Memoirs he helped to smuggle out of Russia to the West (where they were published in Lourie’s translation a year after Sakharov’s death in 1989). Sakharov’s widow, Elena Bonner, has helped Lourie’s research, which adds a welcome new perspective on the last 20 years of his eventful life, when husband and wife were subjected to a bullying campaign of threats and slander by the KGB in a vain attempt to silence them.” — Orlando Figes, The Telegraph “A solid factual and interpretive study... Sakharov is an important account of one scientist’s courage and his quest for a humane world at peace.” — Herbert Mitgang, Chicago Tribune “This first biography of the renowned physicist, Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner weaves the details of Sakharov’s life together with the history of the Soviet Union, which barely outlasted him. Lourie... describes Sakharov’s upbringing in a liberal family and his rise through the Soviet science program during the 1930s and ‘40s. Lourie’s vivid accounts of Sakharov’s meetings with Stalin and KGB chief Beria, his role in the intelligentsia, his marriages and his cramped apartments offer a textured picture of Soviet life during the Cold War... Lourie’s intelligent, engaging biography will be appreciated by those interested in Russian and Cold War history.” — Publishers Weekly
This book presents a comprehensive survey of the current state of Russia and how Russia is likely to develop in the immediate future. Not always sticking to the mainstream narrative, it covers political events including Putin’s constitutional reforms of January 2020 and their likely consequences, economic developments, Russia’s international relations and military activities, and changes and issues in Russian society, including in education, the place of women, health care and religion. Special attention is paid to manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book’s overall conclusion is that events of 2020 may compel Putin to ‘think again’ before he decides whether to run for office in 2024.
This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinism—its tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policy—the authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putin’s totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understand—but not accept—how and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times.
