Russia: Putin's Playground; Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar By Anastasia Edel
Russell
This is my first Lightning Guide and I m suitably impressed There is a lot of information crammed between these diminutive covers some of which I have not read in other weighty tomes Excellent brief on Russian history culture and politics Paperback The title might seem misleading at first It isn t a book about Vladimir Putin but instead about his Playground that is Russia Putin of course figures prominently as the latest in a pantheon of autocrats who have ruled Russia for centuries. Russification As someone of Russian heritage who is somewhat well read in its history post 1900 at least and literature I wondered what I d get out of this relatively short book But in fact it s packed with information with three or four thought provoking statements on every page Russian territorial expansion and contraction its love hate relationship with the West its people s sense of resignation and predilection for iron fisted leaders and other topics each get separate chapters Most enlightening for me was the Dissidents chapter which chronicles dissent from the time of Ivan the Terrible until the present day with chilling effect Another chapter about the new oligarchy had me fuming. Russification But back to the title I picked this up in order to answer the question what is it about Vladimir Putin that gets him 85 percent approval ratings in Russia and the grudging admiration of so many people around the world Even I confess to being charmed by his no nonsense statements on international affairs especially compared to the cynically crafted prevarications of Western politicians And who wouldn t like a leader who rides horseback bare chested and pilots a mini submarine to a peace conference The author in certain respects answers the question of Putin s appeal by putting it into historical context throughout the book yet she also leaves it frustratingly not completely answered Though one chapter is about Putin s life I wished it had gone into detail to give me a bit insight into the man himself in the same way the author gave me a fresh insight into the Russian people. Rusia pdf Edel makes no pretense of impartiality when it comes to Putin and the current state of Russian affairs Nevertheless she writes matter of factly with just a tint of characteristic Russian melancholy any anger kept well between the lines so that you can t help but come to the same inevitable conclusions. Russification Why should you read this book If all you know about contemporary Russia is what you read in the headlines then this quick read will help you process that news with greater depth I also think it will prepare anyone planning a visit to Russia to gain a better understanding of the psyche of the place and its people than you d get from the history chapter in your Lonely Planet guide It s also a beautifully designed little book full of artwork and great photos like the awesome one on the cover. Russell I liked it I learned from it It packs a lot in so despite a few minor qualms I give it full marks Paperback This is a brief snappy overview of Russia today which also places the present dismal state of the country in the context of its long history of autocracy or dictatorship and the usual assent of the masses to the non democratic forms of government both under communism and the tsar However despite its perennial lack of political freedom the country has a rich cultural heritage and has also contributed to the culture and progress of the West given the migration of Russian philosophers painters composers writers mathematicians etc to Europe the US etc Ms Edel stresses that a new Iron Curtain should not be allowed to isolate Russia again although Russia under Putin has pursued a number of lawless policies such as the wars in the Caucasus and E Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea which have resulted in sanctions against Russia Ms Edel hopes that the new post communist Russian generation will find a way to enact reforms so that the country will become less of an aggressive oligarchy kleptocracy with the people seemingly wedded to a strong centralized State no matter what the economic system The current system of State control of the media along with a rubber stamp Duma a system in which dissent is severely punished and dozens of journalists have been murdered seems aside from the economic transition to capitalism similar to the repressive situation prior to the fall of the USSR perhaps prior to the era of glasnost under Gorbachev You have to wonder how the people put up with it given the socio economic dislocations of the transition era they were told to bear with the economic disarray in light of the coming vibrant economy under democracy That vibrancy didn t exactly materialize so were their sacrifices in vain Unfortunately a few greedy unscrupulous corrupt players since the fall of communism have arranged the commodities centered economy to enrich themselves and use violence to keep the lid on any investigations into their corruption The system results in billions of rubles flowing out of Russia to offshore accounts and billionaire oligarchs buying up luxurious properties in various expensive zip codes around the world while the masses remain in cheap apartments without much hope for the future once again exploited to line the pockets of the rich oligarchs much like in pre Revolutionary days In response to their misery the masses abuse alcohol especially vodka and each year hundreds of thousands leave the country This book simply written which includes excellent illustrations timelines photos gives the entire sad story of Russia s fate since its foundation and how Russia expanded in all directions within a few centuries I would recommend it to anybody interested in the country of Russia Here are the quotes In 1380 Prince Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Mongol army at the Battle of Kulikovo The Code of Law of 1649 tied serfs to estates for life and made fleeing a noble s estate a criminal offense By 1678 nearly all peasants were serfs of their fellow countrymen St Petersburg was built by an army of serfs and the first Russian navy was composed of them Peter the Great replaced the church patriarchy with The Holy Synod composed of bishops and bureaucrats appointed by the tsar Between 1721 and 1814 Russia acquired the territories of modern Estonia Latvia Crimea Ukraine Georgia Moldova Belarus and parts of Poland In 1825 a group of high ranking army officersstaged an abortive coup known as the Decembrist Revolt aimed at establishing a constitutional monarchy The 1861 Emancipation Edict liberated the serfs but gave them no land no money and no place to go The hard conditions in newly built factories contributed to the spread of radical idea including Marxism Afterdefeat in the Russo Japanese War escalatingunrest culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution which forced Nicholas II to grant a constitution and establish a parliament the Duma World War I was grossly mismanagedled to further unrest and to the tsar s abdication in 1917 In the ensuing chaos the Duma established the Provisional Government whose chief adversary on the left was the Petrograd Soviet Among them was a radical communist party known as the Bolsheviks In October 1917 under the leadership of Leninthe Bolsheviks managed to seize the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and establish a dictatorship of he proletariat Following the removal of Khrushchev by the Communist Party s Central Committee in 1964 in the aftermath of the Cuban missile Crisis the Soviet Union slipped into another cycle of reaction and economic and political stagnation under Leonid Brezhnev Gorbachev launched reforms known as perestroika between 1985 and 1991 which aimed at the reorganization and democratization of the Communist Party and the revival of he moribund planned economy the reforms resulted in galloping inflation and food shortages In August of 1991 a failed coup by party hardliners shifted power from Gorbachev the party leader to Yeltsin the first elected president of he Russian Republic In December of 1991 at an informal meeting in Belarus the leaders of Russia Ukraineand Belarus signed an agreement that effectively dissolved the USSRGorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the party and dissolved all party units The Soviet Union ceased to exist As the president of the Russian FederationYeltsin struggled through years of market reforms economic chaos and a war with breakaway Chechnya In 1999 he resigned choosing as his successor a KGB old timer and staunch campaigner against Chechen separatists Prime Minister Vladimir Putin The US and EU sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea resulted in escalating anti Western rhetoric and the closure of many foreign organizations A crackdown on independent media gave Putin virtually unlimited control over public opinion Russia s eastward expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries was accompanied by genocidal massacres of indigenous populations comparable to the European colonization of America at present only 2. Russification 5 per cent of the entire population of Siberia is native to the region Some ethnic groups were virtually wiped out out of 20000 Daur people only 8000 remained 70 percent of Yakuts died within 40 years of the conquest Those were survived were challenged by both vodka and disease Russia in the 19th century launched a 47 year long conquest of the North Caucasus eventually annexing several territories and tribal groups among them the Chechens Between 1865 and 1887 much of Central Asia was annexed In 1988 in a major reversal of post soviet expansionism Mikhail Gorbachevbegan pulling Soviet troops out of Afghanistan and declared that the USSR would no longer participate in crushing anti communist revolts The cycle of reaction under Stalin was accompanied by the quick re establishment of an inequitable hierarchical relationship between the center and the various peripheral peoples The legacy of two empires Russian and Soviet has left a large number of ethnic Russians living in the now independent states The February 1917 Revolutionwas the continuation of the political reformation started by the Decembrists and carried out by their followers in the ruling classes and in the majority of the intelligentsia The October Revolution of 1917 along with the civil war that erupted in its aftermath emerged from the concept of a complete destruction of the state advocated by the most radical part of the intelligentsia as well as by the peasant revolts that had been shaking the country from the 17th century onward All property was nationalized The national peripheries which later became the Soviet Republics of Georgia Kazakhstan the Baltic States and others seceded The army decimated and demoralized split into Reds and Whites Old Russia as it had been known since the 14th century disappeared The current vision that President Putin is promoting domestically and abroad is the so called power vertical which entails increasingly centralized control and direct management of the government the military the media and key areas of economic activity The Russian armed forces absorbed all Soviet armed forces based in the territory of the Russia Soviet Federal Socialist Republic at the time of the USSR s dissolution Putin s reelection if 2012 marked the beginning of a widespread crackdown on independent media in 2014 a law restricting bloggers and social media users allowed authorities to block websites without explanation required popular bloggers to register with the mass media regulator Roskomnadzor and demanded that Internet companies give authorities access to users information Throughout the centuries Russian security forces have been answering directly to a supreme ruler and in implementing his will have enjoyed special privileges that put them above the law Stalin s NKVDwas directly responsible for killing millions of Soviet people The head of the FSB reports directly to President Putin Repeatedly conquered by foreigners the Russian people came to perceive state power as alien which partly explains their lack of drive in reining it in In a hundred years the Russian economy roared through what took other countries centuries to develop theagrarian country prior to the 1905 Revolutionleaped into nationalization war communism and the New Economic Policy or NEP that promoted some elements of free enterprise 1921 1928 followed by Stalin s deadly industrialization 1928 41 a military economy 1941 1945 a centrally planned economy 1945 1991 and finally capitalism It is a capitalism in which one third of the country s wealth is controlled by just 110 billionaires most of whom have close personal ties to President Putin this melding of vertical power and highly concentrated wealthgives rise to the question whether modern day Russia is an oligarchy or a kleptocracy in modern day Russiacorruption and criminalityhave pervaded the country s infrastructure to the extent that it is impossible to make a living without playing by the system s rules What governs this type of universe is not capitalism defined as free enterprise rule of law and recognition of individual rights but rather as short term personal enrichment During the communist years when formally materialism and money grubbing were derided a system of special privileges existed for those close to power allowing them access to better food better clothes better apartments the Russian economy is not in good shape Fifty six percent of state revenue comes from exports of oil and gas This high dependency on natural resources makes the Russian economy subject to commodity boom and bust cycles Alexander Blok s poemshad a profound influence on European poetry three quarters of Russia s territory are in Asia yet 77 percent of its population lies in the European part By its style of government and attitude toward personal freedom modern Russia is much closer to the Golden Horde than to European parliamentary democracies Under Peter the army became a combination of professional officers and peasants drafted into the army for decades long terms of conscription A powerful undercurrent to this Western spirit was the Russian ness of the simple folk the serfs and peasants who unlike their masters were allowed to retain their roots Famously in War and Peace it is the peasant Platon Karatayev who reveals the truth to the Western educated protagonist Pierre Bezukhov In 1833 Tsar Nicholas made Orthodoxy Autocracy and Nationality his ideological doctrine In responsetwo intellectual movements emerged the Westernersand the Slavophiles who emphasized the patriarchal nature of the people advocated for traditionalism and believed in Russia s messianic path Decembrist writers Alexander Herzen and Ivan Turgenev and leading Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky were all Westerners Among the notable Slavophiles were philosopher Vladimir Solovyev critic Konstantin Aksakov and poet Fyodor Tyutchev the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky associated with Slavophiles as well The acceptance of the former Baltic republics into NATO gave the Russian government carte blanche to stoke centuries old beliefs that the West s real interest is in destroying Russia the Russian Federation is home to over a hundred nationalities and ethnic groups The Russian language one of the few available common denominators in the volatile Russian state is the eighth most spoken language in the world Its alphabet is a combination of Greek and Latin letters Because Hitler considered the Slavs inferior in Russia the carnage of World War II was accompanied by civilian atrocities on a mass scale Westerners traveling to Siberia are often shocked by the absence of memorials to Gulag victims War is an important part of the state s myth making Out of the reality of the 20th century with its devastating wars revolutions and purges a defining national narrative has emerged that of human suffering The sate uses this trauma for its own purposes creating the adjacent myth of victory at any cost which it supplements via the continuous promulgation of war imagery Pogroms may be a thing of the past but Antisemitism is alive as are anti Asian anti gay anti lesbian anti American or fill the blank with the most recent pariah attitudes Racist and nationalist statements are promulgated by politicians and cultural figures culturally Russia has always been a conservative and patriarchal society Sixty percent of pregnancies are terminated Because most attempts at a dialogue with power end up in Siberia Russian people try to lead their lives with as little interaction with the state as possible Russians put an unusually high value on humor irony and sarcasm When they drink it is often to delirium when they love it is to death They are prone to great swings in one way or another When left alone they are no different than any other nation in the world people in search of happiness Unfortunately within their native borders they re rarely left alone the big themes promulgated by the official culture during the Soviet era at home and abroad were themes to which ordinary Russians responded with tepid interest at best Russian culture is like a bottomless matryoshka doll What the eye sees the smoothed narratives and artifacts transmitted by the cultural authorities of the moment is only the outer layer The 2014 Sochi Olympics opening ceremony omitted the Great Patriotic Waror perestroika and everything that followed It was as if the last twenty years hadn t happened The depiction of Khrushchev s era was limited to astronaut Yuri Gagarin and dancing hipsters with not a word about the return of Gulag prisoners Khrushchev s main achievement Throughout history Russians have been handed many myths the Oneness of the Tsar and the people Peasants and Workers The Nation of Revolutionaries and the Nation of Victors to say nothing of the forever alive Lenin whose embalmed body still perpetuates his myth from inside the Red Square s mausoleum The facts of reality like Stalin s purges of Lenin s Party the Gulag Archipelago or the Nation of Oligarchs are less palatable In a country with asymmetric distribution of economic and political power culture is also one of the few available spheres where people can participate processing and responding to what they see Adored by crowds for his clear and sonorous verse that drew as much on Russian folklore as it did on the masterpieces of European literature Alexander Pushkin the author of Eugene Onegin and Exegi Monumentum was exiled censored called a writer of cheap ditties put under house arrest and ultimately lured into a duel he couldn t survive The Bolsheviks disliked thinking freely as much as the tsars but were methodical about suppressing it marching hundreds of poets writers scientists and artists to their deaths Those who were spared had to conform and glorify the regime Kazimir Malevich was forced to give abstraction ism Dmitri Shostakovich was made to write revolutionary music Pussy Riot s feminist agenda does not resonate in Russia where the prevailing attitude is that feminists are harpies whose unfulfilled personal lives prompt them to take revenge on men Sexism and even open violence towards women. Rusiako iraultza are at best settled quietly or at worst ignored Victims are turned into offenders it is exactly this environment that the members of Pussy Riot are fighting against Fighting dissent in all its forms while promulgating the belief in its own supreme authority has been the linchpin of the state s ideological effort sine its emergence The homophobic misogynisticand xenophobic sentiments of he Russian people are a great achievement of the state and a tactic par excellence to redirect dissent from its real targets and onto the other on December 14 1825 a group of liberal officers convinced some of the troops in St Petersburg to refuse the loyalty oath to Nicholas I and demand the accession of his brother Constantine Unlike the previous revolts and coups the Decembrist Revolt sought not a better tsar but an overthrow of the absolutist regime the abolition of serfdom and the reorganization of the government The rebellion was poorly organized and easily suppressed Afterwards Various political circles and societies emerged to which the state responded with intensified policing censorship and exiling of politically unreliable elements to Siberia sometimes sentenced to hard labor The illegitimate son of a wealthy noble who once swore to continue the cause of the Decembrists Alexander Herzen received permission to go abroad in 1847 He never returned and instead went to London and founded the Free Russian Press the first uncensored printing enterprise in Russian history In 1861 36 years after the Decembrist Revolt the tsar issued the Emancipation Edit that officially freed the serfs Accurate portraits of the pre revolutionary Russian intelligentsia can be found in the works of writers Dostoevsky Chekhov Turgenev and Tolstoy all of whom depicted tormented men aware of their imperfections and seeking the truth Stalin annihilated the intelligentsia whom her perceived as a challenge to his power Two things catch the eye when studying Russian entries in the Forbes 2015 billionaires list all are in the self made category and all list raw commodities as their primary source of wealth Those commodity categories bear a striking resemblance to the old Soviet textbooks that used to proudly enumerate the USSR s natural resources world s largest gas deposits world s largest aluminum ore deposits or world s largest diamond deposits In a typical Russian way post perestroika justice came to be a privilege of the few Paperback An excellent short introduction to Russian history and culture focusing on the ideas that make modern Russia the state and place it is today Paperback I came across this book by accident via A Soviet New Year With Mayonnaise article by Anastasia Edel in the New York Review of Books At first it felt like a book in the For Dummies series but it s actually than that It is is a short but well written introduction to Russian history both cultural and political and a great tool in a search to understand what makes Russia what it is today Paperback
| Russia: Putin's Playground; Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar By Anastasia Edel |
| 1942411626 |
| 9781942411628 |
| English |
| 134 |
| Paperback |
| russisch deutsch |
| russland |
| russification |
| russophobia |
| rusiako iraultza |
| russell |
great short summary of the key trends that shape Russia s policy today and put Putin s regime in a perspective of the history of the nation Paperback PUTIN S PLAYGROUND is THE perfect read if you want to understand what s going on in Russia now and how it got to this point It is also a MUST READ if you are traveling to Russia anytime soon It s packed with lots of relevant information in fun evocative language I spent many of my working years in Russia when all of the changes started in the late 1980s and wish I had PUTIN S PLAYGROUND along for that journey Paperback.