From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/13/2006 12:14 AM
SUNDAY, MARCH 12, 2006 12:00 AM
Author indicts Russian president
Reviewer Noah Haglund, a crime reporter for The Post and Courier
PUTIN'S RUSSIA: Life in a Failing Democracy. By Anna Politkovskaya. Metropolitan Books. 288 pages. $25.
Why do we care about Russia? Or do we?
The trunk of the Soviet colossus may have receded into a mere regional power. So maybe you don't care. Or maybe you belong to that peculiar breed of Russophiles fascinated with this vast, complex land for its own sake.
Whatever your reasons, Anna Politkovskaya's most recent book translated into English is probably as good a primer as any on the ills of Russia under President Vladimir Putin. But take heed: This isn't the dispassionate Western-style journalism that strives (often without success) for objectivity; this is a fiery indictment of a leader for whom the author openly declares her dislike.
A correspondent for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya may be best known for writing about the wars in Chechnya. That topic, often without obvious or direct connection to Putin, occupies the initial chapters.
But Politkovskaya fails to lay all the ills of post-Soviet Russia squarely at Putin's feet. Would there be bloodshed in Chechnya under another leader? Would capitalism, Russian capitalism, have acquired such a thuggish character? Would the country have more scrupulous judges and police officers?
Perhaps not fair to her nemesis, Politkovskaya probably sizes up the former KGB man correctly: "Yes, stability has come to Russia. It is a monstrous stability under which nobody seeks justice in courts that flaunt their subservience and partisanship. ..."
President Bush hasn't invited Putin back to the Texas ranch recently. And leaders here and in Europe of late appear increasingly worried about Russia's actions - quite literally - as a power broker, limiting or shutting off natural gas to neighboring countries.
Russia has become synonymous with danger and corruption, poverty and suffering in the Western imagination. So information on those fronts hardly come as a revelation.
Politkovskaya's book provides context for these associations, as in the jailing of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Locked in a Siberian jail, the former head of oil behemoth Yukos was far from the only person breaking the rules but one of the select few punished for it. http://www.charleston.net/stories/?newsID=75000§ion=books
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