'A luminous study' Luke Harding, Guardian
'Courageous and shocking' Katy Guest, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday
How did a small-minded, low-level KGB operative come to control the world's largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroy years of progress, making Russia once more a threat to her own people and to the world?
Masha Gessen shows that when Vladimir Putin, an unimportant, low-level KGB operative, was rushed to power by a group of Oligarchs in 1999, he was a man without a history. Yet within a few brief years, he had dismantled Russia's media, wrested control and wealth from the country's burgeoning business class, and decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Virtually every opposing voice was silenced, with political rivals and critics driven into exile or to the grave.
Drawing on information and sources no other writer has tapped, Masha Gessen's fearless account charts Putin's rise from the boy who had scrapped his way through post-war Leningrad schoolyards. Now the 'faceless' man who manoeuvred his way into absolute - and absolutely corrupt - power, has become a threat to the stability of the world, and this important book is more relevant than ever.
Now with a new preface by the author.
'A clear, brave book... Gessen offers intriguing details of the scratching, biting, hair-tearing, undersized, brawling boy Putin, refusing to be bullied in the grubby back yards of Leningrad' James Meek, Observer
'Gessen's engaging prose combines a native's passion with a mordant wit and caustic understatement that are characteristically Russian' AD Miller, Daily Telegraph
Publisher: Granta Publications Ltd
ISBN: 9781803510491
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 232 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 19 mm
A luminous study - Luke Harding, Guardian
Courageous and shocking - Katy Guest, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday
Gessen fearlessly tells the story of the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin - Big Issue in the North
A clear, brave book... Gessen offers intriguing details of the scratching, biting, hair-tearing, undersized, brawling boy Putin, refusing to be bullied in the grubby back yards of Leningrad - James Meek, Observer
Gessen's engaging prose combines a native's passion with a mordant wit and caustic understatement that are characteristically Russian - AD Miller, Daily Telegraph
Bold, detailed, and eloquent - David Evans, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday
Gessen conveys the atmosphere - whether of the last months of the Soviet Union, the chaotic years of Yeltsin, the strange transfer of the presidency to Putin or the disappointments of his period - more accurately than any recent chronicler of the period - Mary Dejevsky, Independent
[A] courageous, enlightening account... Despite the suppression of the media and the murder of critics and political rivals, brave voices like Gessen's, and those before [them], have helped shed some much needed light on Putin's "criminal tyranny" - Lucy Popescu, Independent on Sunday
A rivetingly combative biography... utterly chilling - Sunday Telepgraph
A compelling and exhaustive portrait - Telegraph
Brilliant - Edward Lucas, Daily Mail
Gessen is a talented and versatile journalist - John Lloyd, Financial Times
Gessen has written a brave book, demolishing the numerous myths and legends that have accumulated around [their] subject - Luke Harding, Guardian
[A] fiercely critical biography - Anita Singh, Telegraph
An astonishingly brave and eloquent book - David Evans, Independent on Sunday
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