A chilling and unflinching portrait of one of the most fearsome
figures in world politics.
In 1999, the "Family" surrounding Boris Yeltsin went looking for a
successor to the ailing and increasingly unpopular president.
Vladimir Putin, with very little governmental or administrative
experience--he'd been deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and briefly,
director of the secret police--nevertheless seemed the perfect
choice: a "faceless" creature whom Yeltsin and his cronies could
mold in their own image. Russia and an infatuated West were
determined to see in him the progressive leader of their
dreams--even as Putin, with ruthless efficiency, dismantled the
country's media, wrested control and wealth from the business
class, and destroyed the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Within a
few brief years, virtually every obstacle to his unbridled control
was removed and every opposing voice silenced, with political
rivals and critics driven into exile or to the grave.
Masha Gessen has experienced and reported this history firsthand,
and brings it up to its present moment of unrest and uncertainty.
Her spellbinding account of Putin's rise and reign will stand as a
classic of narrative nonfiction.
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