Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader

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Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader

Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader

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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. The prolific military chronicler and analyst Mark Galeotti has produced exactly the right book at the right time.' The Times A free election is not just about counting the votes correctly; it’s about what happens in the campaign. And I think that the way the campaign was constructed meant there wasn’t any doubt about Putin winning it because you didn’t have any serious challenger on the ballot – you had two professional losers, a clown and a stooge. So obviously Putin looked good against them. The other thing is that he had the relentless support of all the mainstream media and particularly television where most Russians get their news. The rigging you do on election day is the least important bit of election rigging. You’ve touched on the question of whether Putin will last the six years of the presidency. Masha Gessen, who is a Russian American journalist, also thinks the Putin bubble is likely to burst at some point. Can you tell us about her book, The Man Without a Face? I’ve always been fascinated by different cultures. I started to learn Russian in 1998, and intrigued by the language, I began to study Russia more—delving into history and politics and then doing a PhD in Russian foreign policy. Ever since, trying to learn about and understand Russia has been my professional focus. Alongside books in Russian, these books are all to hand on my reference shelf, well-thumbed and marked up, as I try to write my own work. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

Film-maker Angus Macqueen has helped create a platform of award-winning documentaries, Russia On FilmLuke Harding is a journalist who has spent many years as The Guardian correspondent in Ukraine including the present war. Critics point to Putin’s work for the KGB as revealing the core of the man, as so often investing its members with inhuman powers of control, deception, amorality and evil. Short, instead, places the real shaping of the man both before and after his KGB years. Born in the harsh courtyards of postwar Leningrad, he emerged a cautious operator, shy and unreadable, but with a startling streak of brutality. Working for the city’s famously liberal mayor through the whirlwind of chaos and violence that swept his city and Russia in the early 1990s, he forged lasting bonds with everyone from the new business elite to leading mafia bosses and senior players in the Kremlin. He labelled himself a bureaucrat, not a politician. Avoiding conspicuous consumption and not known for swimming in the oceans of corruption around him, he was at the same time not above buying himself a dissertation towards a Candidate of Sciences degree, whose subject was “Strategic Planning for the Rehabilitation of the Mineral Resources Base in the Leningrad Oblast”. Its true author, according to Short, would later receive “several hundred million dollars’ worth of shares”. Loyalty is a trademark and his friends have done very, very well over the years, as the puritan has spectacularly lost his inhibitions. His subsequent rise was public yet shadowy, a sequence of well-chosen battles engaged when he knew he could win. Who remembers that Putin asked the BBC’s Bridget Kendall to moderate the first of his annual phone-ins to speak to the nation and the world?

Immanuel Kant's views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant's writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays.It’s true that once Putin decided to change his way of doing things – once he decided to centralise and to curtail the power of the oligarchs – the second oligarch he dealt with was Berezovsky, after [Vladimir] Gusinsky. Yes, he dealt with him very firmly. Short, a former journalist with the BBC, The Economist and The Times of London, adds to the library of insightful books about the Russian autocrat, including “The New Tsar,” by Steven Lee Myers; “Mr. Putin,” by Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy; “The Man Without a Face,” by Masha Gessen; and “Putin’s World,” by Angela Stent. But unlike those Russia specialists, he comes to his subject as a chronicler of some of history’s biggest villains, having written biographies of Pol Pot and Mao Zedong. Partly, yes. People might want to look at it even if they’re not studying economics. It’s the best book dealing with the problem of oil and natural gas. If you think – and I do – that there has been a re-balancing of the state and private capital in Russia, what the re-balancing has been about is oil and gas resources. The biggest fight between Putin and the oligarchs was that between Putin and Khodorkovsky, which Putin won very clearly. Khodorkovsky has now received a second jail sentence, which is clearly punitive and retributive and nothing to do with justice. It’s the oil and gas resources that the fight was over – state ownership of those resources and the tax revenues received. What this book talks about is whether those resources have made Russia better, not only for its ruling elite but for the people as a whole. It’s written in economic language, but it’s such an important question if people are going to understand what’s going on in Russia today. I think the fact that it is a debate incorporating different points of view makes it the best thing to read on that aspect of Russia.



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