Russia is becoming more stubborn and vindictive on the world stage. what does this portend for the future of europe? Does it signal a shift in geopolitical waters?
To understand Russia and its malaise with the rest of the world, we must start with history. the fundamental disagreement is not about ukraine’s free trade relations with the european union, or even about the right of former soviet satellite states to join nato. what is fundamentally at stake is the importance of the collapse of the Soviet empire. For the captive nations of Europe, this was a release, a chance to chart their own course after decades of foreign rule. there was a time when many Russians also saw things that way. after all, they suffered more severely under communism. But for Vladimir Putin, 1991 was the geopolitical catastrophe of the century. he feels that russia was wronged by the west and that it is time for reckoning.
You are reading: Best books about russia
His book The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West was first published in 2008. What has changed since then and what can we expect from Russia in the years to come?
The main thing that has changed is that the Russian regime has confirmed the central thesis of the book, of repression at home, aggression abroad and the weakness of the West. this is good in a sense because it has proved me right. it is bad in a much more important sense, because my warnings were not heeded and the Ukrainians have paid a horrible price for our complacency and illusions. I fear that Russia is in a downward spiral where it will become an even more destructive and difficult force.
what does the annexation of crimea and continued russian involvement in eastern ukraine mean for ukraine’s future? Do you feel that it is a divided country?
ukraine was not a divided country until russia attacked it. it had complex linguistic, ethnic, and cultural differences, but was not clearly divided into “Russians” and “Ukrainians” or even Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers. this is difficult for westerners to understand, who live in what they consider to be monoglot countries. Russia’s “involvement” in (I would say invasion of) eastern Ukraine is a debilitating influence on the country’s future. one of the effects of this is to consolidate ukrainians’ sense of statehood and national identity, which had been taking shape slowly and piecemeal since 1991. but we should have very modest expectations of ukraine now, as it is belatedly embarking on the reforms it should have done years ago. , and in exceptionally difficult conditions.
See Also: Best Meditation Books in 2022
And how does that impact the thinking of other countries of the former Soviet bloc? is it a “choice” between west and east for them?
the whole idea of ”election” is anathema to the kremlin. believes that proximity to russia should inherently limit the sovereignty of the countries in question. Unfortunately, history is not flexible in this regard. Central Asian countries, once a docile collection of Kremlin satrapies, are turning east toward China, particularly in gas exports from Turkmenistan. this has been an unpleasant shock and profound geopolitical change. The appeal of the Western model, for all its flaws, undermines the Kremlin’s influence on swathes of the former empire. As a result, Mr Putin is a man in a hurry. he needs a game changer, and i’m afraid he’ll find one.
Your first selection is Alexander Etkind’s Internal Colonization, a new take on Russian political and cultural history.
Russia’s problems long predate its modern rulers, and their theft of the country’s oil and gas wealth. they begin in an era when it was furs, not hydrocarbons, that attracted the voracious interest of the men above. alexander etkind’s acclaimed internal colonization: russia’s imperial experience is the most interesting and controversial book on the country’s cultural history, explaining how russia has colonized itself, applying abuse and misrule at home that other countries applied later in its overseas territories.
what about timothy snyder’s bloodlands?
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin offers the best account of the most important and terrible years of the last century, when Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler jointly sent the lands and people between their two empires to the meat grinder. Western readers will find the book stimulating; some may feel uneasy that this is a part of the story, and an angle to it, that is less familiar than it should be. but in russia, bloodlands counts as heresy. the Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians and others, Jews and Gentiles alike, murdered by the millions are all but forgotten. but their ghosts are not deposited.
See Also: Chapter 01
anne applebaum’s gulag focuses on the evils committed by russia on itself.
it would be a mistake to see russia only as a perpetrator. she was also a victim. To see what Stalin did to Russia, the best book is Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History. drawing on detailed archival research, he talks about sudden arrests, sham trials, exhausting transportation, labor camp hardships, starvation and disease, and also how unwilling modern russia is to accept them .
next is a classic: david remnick’s tomb of lenin.
To understand the collapse of communism firsthand, the tale like no other is David Remnick’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tomb of Lenin: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Former Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post (and now editor of the New Yorker), Remnick exemplifies the virtues of American journalism: meticulous precision, a mosaic of fascinating anecdotes and details, and a powerful and evocative analytical framework.
your final pick, putin’s kleptocracy, is an expose of the putin regime published last fall and it caused quite a stir.
Russia’s chaotic conditions in the 1990s laid the groundwork for the rematch of the Putin era at home and abroad. But the story outsiders saw, of poverty, political chaos and faltering economic reform, was only part of the true picture. karen dawisha putin’s kleptocracy: whose russia is it? explains what really happened: the sinister fusion of organized crime, intelligence, bureaucracy, and business that took shape in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, then moved to Moscow and took over the entire country. dawisha’s book is so explosive that the original publisher, cambridge university press, decided it was too unwieldy.
See Also: S.J. Rozan – Book Series In Order