Book description
Internationally admired for her reporting, especially on the Chechen
wars, award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya has turned her
steely gaze on the man who, until very recently, was a darling of the
Western media.
A former KGB spy, Vladimir Putin was named President of Russia in
2000. From the moment he entered the public arena he marketed himself
as an open, enlightened leader eager to engage with the West. Unlike
many European and American journalists and politicians, Politkovskaya
never trusted Putin's press image. From her privileged vantage point
at the heart of Russian current affairs, she set about to dismantle
both Putin the man and Putin the brand name, arguing that he is a
power-hungry product of his own history and so unable to prevent
himself from stifling civil liberties at every turn. This is not,
Polikovskaya argues, the kind of leader most contemporary Russians want.
To prove her theory, she tells the story of Putin's iron grip on
Russian life from the point of view of individual citizens whose
situations have been shaped by his unique brand of tyranny. Mafia
dealings, scandals in the provinces, military and judiciary
corruption, the decline of the intelligentsia, the tragic mishandling
of the Moscow theatre siege - all are subject to Polikovskaya's
pitiless but invariably humane scrutiny. This intimate portrait of
nascent civil institutions being subverted under the unquestioning
eyes of the West could not be more timely.
Known to many as 'Russia's lost moral conscience', Anna Politkovskaya
was a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper
Novaya gazeta
and the recipient of many honours for her writing. She is the author of
A Dirty War
,
A Russian Diary
and
Nothing But the Truth
, a collection of her journalism. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in
Moscow in October 2006.
