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crafalsk264's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
“We will drive humanity to happiness with an iron hand.” (Soviet Slogan from Stalin Era).
In 1999, Putin was elected president of Russia. In the first few months of his term, he traveled widely across the sprawling country covering more than 500 miles from east to west and through each of Russia’s 11 time zones. He had a vague idea of coordinating a speech in every time zone at midnight New Year’s Eve in 2000. At that time, Russia had 11 time zones although the country had had a checkered history of how many time zones there were and what their boundaries were. Most recently, during the period of Putin’s brief break between his two tenures as president, Dmitry Medvedev changed the number to 9 to streamline business relations. Astronomically the estimate of the true zones is 5-7. Upon Putin’s reelection in 2012 and given his concern that everything about Russia be the biggest, grandest country in the world, he changed it back to 11.
During the spring and summer of 2017, the authors wanted to see if Putin’s journey had had any effects on the residents of those regions and towns. Nina Khrushchev is the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev. Jeffrey Taylor is an ex-pat US reporter/journalist who has lived with his Russian wife in Moscow for over 20 years. Together they bring a unique view to examining the history, politics, current affairs and social climate of contemporary Russia.
This book was a fascinating portrait of Russia and its people prior to the Ukraine Invasion. It explains in some measure how the Russian citizen’s view Putin’s Russia and the success of his regime. I enjoyed this book and learned much about a puzzling country and its people. The history of Russia under the various leaders was told from a narrative focus rather than a chronological historical account. The Khrushchev regime is examined less than the others, but I don’t see it as a major flaw. I highly recommend to those interested in a more personal, less scholarly profile of a country, a people and a man who leads them. The authors open most of the chapters with a quotation or a contemporary Russian joke.
Contemporary Russian Jokes:
The Kremlin warned that if the West continues to increase sanctions, the Kremlin will increase Putin’s ratings.
In Russia there is a thousand year old tradition to pass on a dream—generation to generation, father to son, one political system to the next—that in a country so rich with resources, people will live well one day.
Can you fix a town in 24 hours? Yes, you can. Putin only has to announce he will visit the whole region and pick the town later.
Putin has failed to build us a great future, so he has built us a great past.
susanreadstheworld's review against another edition
1.0
Mmm.... No. This is a very superficial account and ones that seems forced. The authors went looking for anything that would support their clearly negative view of Russia and Russians. This is biased and unscholarly.
bookstagomez's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating deep-dive into the Russia we know (or don't) and the Soviet Union many of us never experienced. The book introduces Russian and Soviet politics in a digestible way, and although it white-washes many elements of the USSR - particularly Nikita Khrushchev's reign, as the author is his great-granddaughter - it serves its purpose as an introduction to this mysterious country for many Westerners and highlighting its split-personality in regards to its national identity.
maya_loves_2read's review against another edition
3.0
A fast read , more like a fleeting TripAdvisor review rather than coming from a professor and granddaughter of Khrushchev .no deep insights just impressions
elainareads's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this strange book. Part political history, part geography lesson, part travelogue, and a healthy sprinkling of Russian contemporary "jokes."
michaelnlibrarian's review
3.0
The authors present Russia by traveling from west to east visiting about a dozen different cities, including St Petersburg and Moscow but with an emphasis on the other cities from Kaliningrad in the west to Petropavlosk-Kamchatskii in the east and what similarities they observe along with regional differences. The authors are Nina Khrushcheva, a Russian who now teaches in the U.S., a professor of international affairs, and Jeffrey Tayler, who lives in Moscow and is married to a Russian, whose previous books are mostly descriptions of trips he took in different parts of the world.
As a book trying to present who Russians are today under Putin, I'm not sure their travel narrative approach works that well. It isn't clear when the visits to the different cities took place or how long they were in any one place. Using a typical usual travel approach, what are apparently meant to be representative interactions with different individuals are presented as though representative of Russians today and the places where they took place. Well, perhaps.
I'm not sure who the expected audience for this book is. Like many travel books for exotic places (and many of the cities they visited certainly qualify for most Americans as such) there is a fair amount of background history supplied along with the description of the current situation and some current persons met, but I don't think there is enough of the basics about these places with a focus on more unusual aspects. Of course this is often a problem with books like these - balancing the potentially droning history in favor of more engaging anecdotes.
As it happens, I have visited more than half these cities, but I did this travel over about a dozen years starting in the 1990s, and not recently, so I was intrigued and enjoyed this. I also thought that the conclusion that Russia today is a mass of contradictions (my short version) made sense.
For readers who know about Russia but not much about the regions, this is probably a good read.
As a book trying to present who Russians are today under Putin, I'm not sure their travel narrative approach works that well. It isn't clear when the visits to the different cities took place or how long they were in any one place. Using a typical usual travel approach, what are apparently meant to be representative interactions with different individuals are presented as though representative of Russians today and the places where they took place. Well, perhaps.
I'm not sure who the expected audience for this book is. Like many travel books for exotic places (and many of the cities they visited certainly qualify for most Americans as such) there is a fair amount of background history supplied along with the description of the current situation and some current persons met, but I don't think there is enough of the basics about these places with a focus on more unusual aspects. Of course this is often a problem with books like these - balancing the potentially droning history in favor of more engaging anecdotes.
As it happens, I have visited more than half these cities, but I did this travel over about a dozen years starting in the 1990s, and not recently, so I was intrigued and enjoyed this. I also thought that the conclusion that Russia today is a mass of contradictions (my short version) made sense.
For readers who know about Russia but not much about the regions, this is probably a good read.
bookchickjlm's review
2.0
A dull travelogue with an underlying tone of disdain. I had hoped for more.
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