Putin's Labyrinth

by Levine, Steve

• ISBN13: 9780812978414
• ISBN10: 0812978412
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-04-21
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Summary

InPutin's Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived inand reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. President Dmitri Medvedev and the country's real power, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, are posing a resolute challenge to the West. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a "culture of death"from targeted assassinations of the state's enemies to the Kremlin's indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Interviews with eyewitnessesand the families and friends of these victims reveal how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence and the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people. The result is a fresh way of assessing the forces that are driving this major new confrontation with the West.

Author Biography

Steve LeVine is the author of The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea. He is the chief foreign affairs writer for BusinessWeek and is based in Washington, D.C. He was a foreign correspondent for eighteen years, posted in the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and the Philippines, reporting for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, and other publications.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. xiii
Cast of Characters	p. xxiii
Russia's Dark Side	p. 3
A Land in the Grip of a Brutal History
How Putin Got Elected	p. 13
Boris Yeltsin Finds a Guarantor in a Man from Nowhere
Getting to Know The Putin	p. 26
Morning in Russia-at a Price
Nikolai	p. 36
The First Victim of Deliberate Nuclear Poisoning
Nord-Ost	p. 49
Once Again, Mother Russia Fails Her People
The Exiles	p. 68
Boris Berezovsky and the Sanctuary of London
The Crusading American	p. 88
Paul Klebnikov and Glorious Russia
Murder on an Elevator	p. 103
Anna Politkovskaya and the Voiceless of Russia
The Traitor	p. 122
Alexander Litvinenko: A Defector in London
Polonium	p. 137
The World Is Witness to an Assassination
Epilogue	p. 157
Afterword	p. 167
Acknowledgments	p. 173
Notes	p. 177
Bibliography and Note on Sources	p. 197
Index	p. 201
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