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Ruler Putin 2019: Not as contempt for the oligarchs
Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
1. »The future is history« by Masha Gessen
Russia was once a country full of democratic hopes.
How this could become an authoritarian state with neo-imperial ambitions is the story told by the American-Russian author Masha Gessen in her major book »The Future is History«.
Gessen is a journalist, she works for the »New Yorker« and for her book she tells the life stories of four young people whom she has accompanied for years.
They went to school when glasnost transformed the country, went to work when the Soviet Union collapsed - and grew up under Putin.
Four different people who wanted a modern Russia and failed.
The suppression of the democracy movement in 2012 and the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015 form the center of the book, Nemtsov's daughter is a protagonist.
It is a book that shows how contradictory the role of the oligarchs is, that until recently there were still gaps in Putin's rule - but also how hopeless it has become as the present approaches.
Some of the characters in the book end up leaving Russia – to Ukraine.
Toby Rapp
2. »Nothing is true and everything is possible« by Peter Pomerantsev
The great thing about Peter Pomerantsev is that he's not only smart - he's also very, very funny.
In 2006 he went to Moscow to produce television programs for Russian broadcasters.
He can, he comes from London, where he worked for British broadcasters for years – but he wants to go to Russia.
Because his family comes from there and because the country appeals to him.
Especially Moscow, then a boomtown exploding with money.
And basically, Pomerantsev only writes down what he experiences when he is drawn into the Russian media world.
He does reality TV and quickly realizes that the entire Russian media world is a bizarre parallel universe: where nothing is true and everything is possible.
He meets the new super rich, old gangsters, contract killers, a minister who writes science fiction novels at the same time and lets himself be deeply drawn into Putin's propaganda factories.
It's as rapid as it is grotesque - and depicts quite well the monstrous machine that has been explaining the world to the Russians for years.
Toby Rapp
3. »Putin's Russia« by Darryl Cunningham
Vladimir Putin, writes British author and illustrator Darryl Cunningham at the end of his new English-language graphic novel, "should not be viewed as an internationally respected leader, but as a murderous KGB mafia boss with a death squad and a chemical weapons laboratory." Russia must decide between dictatorship and democracy, »it's a simple choice«.
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Journalist Politkovskaya in the comic
Photo: Darryl Cunningham / Drawn & Quarterly
As dramatic as it gets at the end, Cunningham describes Putin's career from schoolyard bully to KGB agent and official, and finally to the head of state who seizes power when Boris Yeltsin disappears in the alcohol fog - and Russia has held in his power ever since.
The book ranges from the school massacre in Beslan to the annexation of Crimea and the war in Syria to Trump.
Cartoonist Cunningham has written acclaimed, scathing books about conspiracy theories and US tech billionaires, but his meticulous biography of Putin comes at just the right time, setting a dead-straight line connecting Putin's often cold and ruthless power plays from the past to invading Ukraine.
Cunningham's story is also compelling because of its focus on individuals who tried to get in Putin's way, often paying the price with their lives or their freedom: People's Deputy Marina Salje, who uncovered Putin's early money laundering deals in St. Petersburg, female journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, uncomfortable KGB opponents like Alexander Litvinenko, members of the opposition like Boris Nemtsov or, most recently, Alexei Navalny.
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Darryl Cunningham
Putin's Russia: The Rise of a Dictator
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Number of pages: 154
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Number of pages: 154
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The documentary drawings do not always dovetail effectively with the journalistic text, which Cunningham safeguards with a multi-page index of sources.
But those who currently have little time to work their way through thick tomes will get their hands on a handy reader about the rise and methods of an eternally manipulative despot in »Putin's Russia«.
Andrew Borcholte
4. »Putin's Net« by Catherine Belton
Many good biographies of Vladimir Putin have appeared over the years, Catherine Belton's "Putin's Net" being the latest - and perhaps the brightest.
Belton is one of the best Western Kremlin experts. She has been reporting from Moscow for many years, most recently for the Financial Times.
What makes her book so interesting is that she looks at the network of people that Putin took from the intelligence community to the heart of Russian power.
Putin has nothing but contempt for the oligarchs, and ousting them was the first battle he fought when he became president.
Instead, he's placed in key positions in a network of intelligence agents -- the only people he trusts.
Belton was also criticized for her book, but she cannot prove that Putin was the KGB contact of the RAF people when he was still stationed in the GDR, it is also unlikely.
Belton's book is indispensable as a history of how Vladimir Putin's KGB, apparently ousted after the fall of the Soviet Union, took revenge for its downfall in the 1990s.
It shows who is in power in Russia.
Toby Rapp