Russians: The People behind the Power [Kindle Edition] Author: Gregory Feifer | Language: English | ISBN:
B0092XN8L4 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories to portray the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today.
RUSSIANS explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions by showing that much of what appears inexplicable about the country is logical when seen from the inside. He gets to the heart of why the world's leading energy producer continues to exasperate many in the international community. And he makes clear why President Vladimir Putin remains popular even as the gap widens between the super-rich and the great majority of poor.
Traversing the world's largest country from the violent North Caucasus to Arctic Siberia, Feifer conducted hundreds of intimate conversations about everything from sex and vodka to Russia's complex relationship with the world. From fabulously wealthy oligarchs to the destitute elderly babushki who beg in Moscow's streets, he tells the story of a society bursting with vitality under a leadership rooted in tradition and often on the edge of collapse despite its authoritarian power.
Feifer also draws on formative experiences in Russia's past and illustrative workings of its culture to shed much-needed light on the purposely hidden functioning of its society before, during, and after communism. Woven throughout is an intimate, first-person account of his family history, from his Russian mother's coming of age among Moscow's bohemian artistic elite to his American father's harrowing vodka-fueled run-ins with the KGB.
What emerges is a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes whose forbidding geography, merciless climate, and crushing corruption has nevertheless produced some of the world's greatest art and some of its most remarkable scientific advances. RUSSIANS is an expertly observed, gripping profile of a people who will continue challenging the West for the foreseeable future.
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- File Size: 1359 KB
- Print Length: 360 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1455509647
- Publisher: Twelve (February 18, 2014)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0092XN8L4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,715 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Communism & Socialism - #4
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Like a short story by Chekhov, Gregory Feifer's fascinating new book manages to encompass a vast landscape of human complication -- and the expanses of the world's largest nation -- within relatively few pages. At its core is the author's own family story across three generations. Feifer's grandparents saw their lives destroyed in Stalin's purges; his parents (an American journalist and a Russian university student) lived an unlikely Cold War romance amid Khrushchev's U.S.S.R.; and the author himself has vividly experienced the highs and lows of Communism's collapse and the rise of a new authoritarianism. Around this framework, he builds the larger saga of contemporary Russia. Feifer has traveled as widely and delved as deeply as any journalist of his generation, and he recounts his experiences vividly and with frequent humor. This book will offer insights to historians and policymakers while also informing and entertaining the ordinary reader.
The matryoshka doll on the dust jacket is an apt symbol of what's inside: "Russians" is a compact book that contains multitudes, and that amuses even as it reveals.
By A reader in Washington, D.C.
While a bit heavy on personal stories past and present, Feifer's portrait of Russia is perhaps more accurate than even the US State Department might care to admit. For American's unfamiliar with how Russia's history and culture still play a defining role today, this book brings the complicated elements to life--from the country's political leadership to the common man or woman on the streets of Moscow or the farms in rural communities.
From a western perspective it is all a bit sad, but we must fundamentally understand the web of events, people, politics and culture that makes this country tick. And for those who thought the collapse of the Soviet Union would open the country to western ideas, innovation and our concept of democracy and capitalism, Feifer makes it clear that change will come slowly to Russia, even under the best and most enlightened of circumstances.
I left this book just as I left Russia after several visits… feeling glum about the future because of the country's insular orientation and its inability to risk change.
By Dale Terry
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