Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin by Robert Service (PDF)

Description

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics since Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency in his favour in May 2000. He served two terms as president, before himself relinquishing the post to his prime minister, Dimitri Medvedev, only to return to presidential power for a third time in 2012. Putin’s rule, whether as president or prime minister, has been marked by a steady increase in domestic repression and international assertiveness. Despite this, there have been signs of liberal growth and Putin – and Russia – now faces a far from certain future.In Kremlin Winter, Robert Service, acclaimed biographer of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky and one of our finest historians of modern Russia, brings his deep understanding of that country to bear on the man who leads it. He reveals a premier who cannot take his supremacy for granted, yet is determined to impose his will not only on his closest associates but on society at large. It is a riveting insight into power politics as Russia faces a blizzard of difficulties both at home and abroad.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People, Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia’s past and present. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This was a good primer on Russia and Putin. It was slanted against Russia and Putin but still readable. It is dense with facts and is serious reading.

⭐Well detailed and thorough, up to date and informative

⭐Book was in great shape!

⭐This is certainly a very readable and interesting chronicle of Vladimir Putin’s rule. But it’s entirely journalistic. There is nothing in the book that isn’t available in the regular press, and already well known to any interested follower of Russian politics. Robert Service offers no interpretation, or intellectual thesis to explain the Putin phenomenon. His account is entirely behavioural.He omits, for example, mention of the catastrophe wreaked on Russia by the 1990 IMF and World Bank insistence on immediate radical economic surgery, rather than effecting a careful transition. This criminal act of economic sabotage resulted in an immediate 40% collapse of the USSR GDP, widespread deprivation, and many early deaths as male life expectancy plummeted, a result predicted by Gorbachēv and independent western consultants. This ranks as a justified complaint at western interference and mismanagement in Russia, to which Putin and others can rightly object.Service also doesn’t consider why Russian social structure has remained feudal and continually failed to embrace the Enlightenment, so that autocratic power still overwhelms logic, image exceeds content, and status overshadows function. Russia’s intelligentsia compromised with the ‘we don’t touch him and he doesn’t touch us’ deal in order to retain their privileges. Now repression extends to losing a job if caught on video at a Navalny rally, being forced to remove critical comment on social media, getting a one-month imprisonment for a critical Tweet. Commonplace corruption extends to the need to bribe doctors and nurses for hospital treatment, university lecturers for admission, and doctors for exemption from military service. Although segments of the domestic economy such as retail, construction and agriculture are flourishing, economic justice is non-existent. How can Putin be surprised that other eastern European nations choose to look west?As Service does mention, a civil airliner is shot down, a UK city is poisoned, senior professionals flee Russia for their lives. For all his bluster, or smug cynicism, Putin has painted Russia into a corner. He has won a few skirmishes, but totally lost the war. There are many senior Russians who are decent, experienced, and qualified to become a far more effective president than Putin. Alone they will be squashed, but acting in concert they can succeed. It is time for them to regain control of their country.

⭐This book covers the twenty odd years between Putin’s accession to the Presidency in 2000 and today. It explains very well the impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the Yeltsin years on Putin’s thinking, and how his instinctive authoritarianism and suspicion of democracy has been reinforced by a career in the KGB / FSB. Professor Service clearly sets out how Russia is led by a man whose primary concern is the maintenance of power, and who deeply regrets the loss of territorial control and influence experienced by Russia as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reader gains a good understanding of both the man and the calculated hostility to the west that drives him to make trouble abroad. This updated edition, published in 2020, makes a valuable contribution towards analysing why Europe today is being confronted with a ‘Putin crisis.’

⭐Good read as always by this author. A real insiders view of Russian affairs, Robert Service is brilliant

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