Volume 53, Number 2 · February 9, 2006
The Emperor Vladimir
By Robert Cottrell
Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy
by Anna Politkovskaya, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait
Metropolitan, 274 pp., $25.00
Putin's Russia
by Lilia Shevtsova,translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis
Carnegie Endowment, revised and expanded edition, 457 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World
by Andrew Wilson
Yale University Press, 332 pp., $40.00
'This book is about Vladimir Putin,' says Anna Politkovskaya, a leading Russian journalist, 'but not, as he is normally viewed in the West, seen through rose-coloured glasses.' Which may seem a puzzling way to start. There is a lot of indifference toward Putin in the West. There is a lot of disappointment. But there is not much admiration, especially now that Putin's strongest ally among European politicians, Gerhard Schroeder, has gone as chancellor of Germany—and has taken a job on Putin's payroll as chairman of a pipeline company.
Review, 5046 words
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