More Nonfiction About Russia: Putin Country

More Nonfiction About Russia: Putin CountryTitle: Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia
Author: Anne Garrels
Source: Library
Links: Bookshop (affiliate link) |Goodreads
Rating:four-stars

Summary: This was an accessible overview of Russia from 1993 to 2013 that used personal stories to share insights about non-Moscow parts of Russia.

The next book on my Russia reading list was published in 2016. It spans an impressively long timeframe in only 228 pages, describing journalist Anne Garrels’ observations of Russia from 1993 to 2013. She follows this history through close looks at the lives of residents of Chelyabinsk. This remote city that Garrels initially chose at random allows her story to cover a more representative and less well-known part of Russia.

The first two chapters of this book give an overview of how Russia changed in the 90s and 2000s respectively. Most of the remaining chapters are devoted to specific people (“The Taxi Driver”, “The Forensic Expert”) or to groups of people (“The Doctors”, “The Muslim Community”). A few of the last chapters are about broader ideas, such as free speech, but these chapters maintain the same tight focus on the individual. The free speech chapter, for example, covers activists and journalists as they responded to changes in restrictions on speech.

Every chapter covers approximately the whole two decades described in the book. I was initially quite skeptical of this organization! Typically, I find that chronological is best. This structure ended up working for me though. The introductory chapters provided a historical overview that gave everything else context. Then each subsequent chapter zoomed in on a few aspects of Russian society to show how individuals were impacted by historical change. In the end, it won me over and I would actually recommend this as an intro to Russia. In short, readable chapters the author conveys an incredible amount of information. We get to know Russia by learning about people who the author has interacted with for two decades. It’s a great overview that doesn’t get bogged down in political details. Really an impressive book!

As a short postscript, part of what prompted me to read about Russia now is the war in Ukraine. I’d like to better understand the history that led up to the invasion. At least in retrospect, there were a few hints here of things to come. First, in 2020, Russia was planning a $500 billion rearmament program (info with a date I’ve misremembered, or which was added in a re-print!). Second, the military seemed in terrible shape with people already avoiding the draft; veterans feeling neglected; soldiers having poor supplies due to corruption; and horrific incidents of military hazing. Reading that, I felt less surprised that Ukraine has so far managed to hold off Russia. Last but not least, recent events made it especially interesting to read about non-Moscow based residents and how they feel about international relations. This included the 2014 invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, so felt very relevant to the kind of support the current invasion may be getting today.

I didn’t engage as much with other reviews I read or podcasts I listened to in this review, but there are two reviews that I’d particularly recommend:

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