The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen

Jun 04, 2012 Adri rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-rejects

Not loving this biography...It feels more like gossip-(mostly in style but also a bit in content) although well researched. It's not as if I do not agree with Gessen about Putin as a unremarkable thug, who came to power to establish a sort of KGB(FSB) approach to running government. It just feels too emotional for a biography. I would have enjoyed something more straight forward. It's as if, because she is a journalist, she has a personal vendetta against him. It's just too personal. Also her wr...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Nate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: dont-own-library-rental, non-fiction, political, 2012, autobiography-biography-memoir, history

This should be more appropriately titled "Why you Should Hate Vladimir Putin."

It is not really a biography on Putin, but rather feels more like a few long essays about random parts of Putin's life that have been laid out in chronological order with a bunch of horror stories sprinkled in. Often times large chunks of chapters aren't even about his life, but rather give background information on random people and their causes, which are then followed by how they were most certainly poisoned/shot/b...more This should be more appropriately titled "Why you Should Hate Vladimir Putin."

It is not really a biography on Putin, but rather feels more like a few long essays about random parts of Putin's life that have been laid out in chronological order with a bunch of horror stories sprinkled in. Often times large chunks of chapters aren't even about his life, but rather give background information on random people and their causes, which are then followed by how they were most certainly poisoned/shot/bombed by people acting on behalf of Putin's orders/interests. The stories are interesting (don't expect happy endings), but do little to tell the reader about how this man came into power. Instead the stories illustrate how he manages his power: like a mob boss.

So although this book is good, in a way I feel duped by it. It's not just the title, I saw the author on an interview where she gave the impression that this was about Putin and how he came to rule Russia. I was expecting a lot more information on ... well, him; but there is no meat to it, no real storyline of how of his life progressed. Once you're finished with the book his rise still feels mysterious. Instead the book is more about how corrupt Russia is under Putin's hand and how he is not an innocent bystander to it all, but rather the captain of it all. I don't doubt that he is, but it was just surprising to feel like you're going to read about one thing, and then the book ends up being about another.

As for the stories, since the whole truth is rarely known, the author is forced to extrapolate assumptions about what probably happened with various scenarios and the events preceding it several times throughout the book. Even though many details may be wrong, I'm sure she has the gist of this man and his character pretty accurate.

The only thing that really had me questioning the author was that she never provided a real reason for how he actually became president. She hints that certain people in power thought he would be one type of person so they seemed to arbitrarily chose him (huh?); then when he came into power he turned out to be someone else. That reason just doesn't make any sense to me. If they were just looking for a puppet they could have surely found someone more qualified, better educated, and who would have actually ended up functioning like a puppet. Feeling that this explanation was composed of more fiction than fact makes me question the validity of the many other assumptions throughout the book.

It's still a good book though that's easy to breeze through. I would recommend it to someone who wants to learn more about how Putin rules his country or to someone who is looking for a reason to cancel their trip to St. Petersburg.(less)

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May 15, 2013 Anton rated it 2 of 5 stars

As its subtitle states, “The Man Without A Face” is about Vladimir Putin’s rise from KGB goon to ‘democratically elected’ (quotation marks intentional) president of Russia. The book also chronicles the fall of the Soviet Union, as the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. set the stage for Putin’s power grab.

Although I found the subject matter of this book very interesting, I didn’t love the writing. Gessen is a journalist and at times this read more like a lengthy newspaper article than a gripping non-f...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Richard Block rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: just-read

Stalin 2 - the Sequel

I finished Masha Gessen's evisceration of Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist regime the day after Boris Berezovsky's death/murder suicide - how timely was that? Gessen is a Russian journalist who has charted events since the demise of the Soviet Union. She exposes Putin as a mafia boss leading a mob state, all corruption, illegal seizures of money and business, state ownership of media fake elections, and clear suppression of freedom - and that Stalinist standby - the political...more Stalin 2 - the Sequel

I finished Masha Gessen's evisceration of Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist regime the day after Boris Berezovsky's death/murder suicide - how timely was that? Gessen is a Russian journalist who has charted events since the demise of the Soviet Union. She exposes Putin as a mafia boss leading a mob state, all corruption, illegal seizures of money and business, state ownership of media fake elections, and clear suppression of freedom - and that Stalinist standby - the political murder. As a frequent visitor to the land of hookers and thieves, I read it open-mouthed, gasping in disbelief and recognition. Yes, it is yellow journalism, but very good indeed.

Charting Putin's rise from his humble beginnings, Gessen shows how the one-time, self confessed little thug has blossomed into a world class thug, killer, billionaire and - incredibly - world leader dedicated to restoring Soviet power and his beloved KGB to its former glory. The astonishing naivity of Yeltsin, Berezovsky and others, who wished to see good in this 'grey blur' reminds me most of Lenin's faith in Stalin. While others warned Lenin that Stalin could not be trusted in a position of power, no one seems to have warned any of these men that Putin was sociopathic. Wishful thinking lead everyone to believe this incredibly non-descript person could never be a danger to anyone, that he might be honest and liberal. You can forget that - this is a total slam-dunk destruction of that notion.

I have removed a star from this review because of the prologue, which deals with the 'white ribbon' revolt following the re-election of Putin. I took it away for the same wishful thinking Gessen accuses others of indulging in. Remember - Putin is in power and he has just murdered the man who picked him out to rule - Berezovsky - yesterday.

For the Western media and people who'd like to think Russia is not the pariah state of old, read this book. Better believe it - Putin is Stalin 2 - the Sequel. Don't expect anything from Russia except murder and politcal suppression until he goes. And those Russians living in Europe, spending their swag stolen from Russia - well, it amazes me that such people are allowed to become citizens of a 'civilised country' -makes you wonder about Britain(less)

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Mar 14, 2013 Zuberino rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: putin, 1990s, leningrad, moscow, russia, ussr, non-fiction

The biggest surprise, after reading this book, is that Masha Gessen is still able to walk the streets of Moscow unharmed! Over 290 methodical pages, she provides ample evidence of Vladimir Putin's true self - a cold, cruel thug with a sea of blood lapping at his feet, a bona fide product of the KGB if ever there was one. The only thing saving Russia, it seems, from a re-run of the Stalinist nightmare is the smaller, hyper-connected world of the 21st century - otherwise, an instinctive authoritar...more The biggest surprise, after reading this book, is that Masha Gessen is still able to walk the streets of Moscow unharmed! Over 290 methodical pages, she provides ample evidence of Vladimir Putin's true self - a cold, cruel thug with a sea of blood lapping at his feet, a bona fide product of the KGB if ever there was one. The only thing saving Russia, it seems, from a re-run of the Stalinist nightmare is the smaller, hyper-connected world of the 21st century - otherwise, an instinctive authoritarian like Putin would love nothing better than gulags, show trials, and totalitarian terror.

As it is, the rap sheet against Putin is still pretty long. Gessen establishes persuasively that Putin's FSB was directly responsible for the wave of apartment bombings across Russia just prior to his ascent to the throne, and she also proves his culpability in the Kursk disaster, the Moscow theatre hostage crisis, and the Beslan school tragedy. Each time, lives could have been saved, each time Putin deliberately chose not to do so, happily swimming instead in the blood of more than 300 dead in Beslan alone. These episodes all make for painful reading.

And the list of people who stood up to him, only to be rubbed out (very often literally), is also pretty long. The most famous victimes are Anatoly Sobchak (most likely poisoned), Alexander Litvinenko (likewise, polonium-210), Anna Politovskaya (shot), Galina Starovoitova (shot), Sergei Magnitsky (died in jail). Lesser lights who also lost their lives include Sergei Yushenkov (shot) and Yuri Shchekochikhin (poisoned). The activist Vaksberg barely missed his rendezvous with the Reaper when his car blew up, without him in it. Ex-Putin aide Marina Litvinovich was beaten to a pulp for going over to the other side, while Marina Salye, perhaps the earliest to latch on to the depravity of this jumped-up KGB hoodlum, was hounded into internal exile.

Russia's richest oligarchs - Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Khodorkovsky - were all systematically stripped of their wealth, ill-gotten or otherwise, before being chased out of the country (Gusinsky, Berezovsky) or sent to the labour camps (Khodorkovsky). Of the trio, the self-important Berezovksy comes off as the most ridiculous figure but also the most culpable in the long run - it was he who plucked Putin out of obscurity and gave him his entry into the halls of power in 1990s Leningrad/St Petersburg. Khodorkovsky on the other hand comes off as a hero of sorts, a brave martyr, and one day when Putin is gone and Khodorkovsky is finally out of jail, I shouldn't wonder if the latter rises high in a new Putin-free Russia.

That other oligarch, the 6'8'' Mikhail Prokhorov, was effectively neutered before he became too much of a threat. Chess legend Garry Kasparov criss-crossed Russia like a wandering prophet after Beslan, preaching the anti-Putin gospel, but the Kremlin monolith barely registered a tremor. US financier William Browder received the usual oligarch treatment - businesses snatched away like so many playthings, visa summarily revoked - and the hapless Sergei Magnitsky died for him. To Browder's credit, the Magnitsky bill has finally become law in America. Today the domestic struggle is carried on by the blogger Navalny and the writer Akunin among others, the latter providing a lovely description of how he wanted to be present at the 2011 protests in person and not have to catch them on YouTube. (That's Shahbag and me, by the way). As I was reading Gessen's eyewitness account of the protests, parallels between Moscow and Shahbag came to me, insistently, unbidden - the selfless idealism that can mobilize and energize a true movement of the people, the initial euphoria that must harden into patience and iron resolve if the movement is not to dissolve into muddle and mess. May both succeed soon.

The most telling examples of Putin's uncontrollable greed occurs towards the end of the book - he literally robbed the Patriots' owner Robert Kraft of his Superbowl ring, and the Guggenheim museum of a glass Kalashnikov. If his menace were limited to such semi-comic examples, it wouldn't be so bad, but he's fucked the world's biggest country hard for more than a decade and could easily go on doing so for another ten years. For the sake of Russia, for the sake of the world - Путин должен уйти! (Putin must go!)(less)

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Mar 04, 2013 Kenley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Masha Gessen describes Leningrad, birthplace of Putin, as "a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children." -- just in case you were wondering what kind of biography you had signed up for.

Gessen is a Russian, a journalist, a Jew and a lesbian. For a biography written without access (surprise!), she is fair with her interspersing of speculation with facts. As someone with a media diet that consists primarily (solely) of western journalism, I found her descriptions...more Masha Gessen describes Leningrad, birthplace of Putin, as "a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children." -- just in case you were wondering what kind of biography you had signed up for.

Gessen is a Russian, a journalist, a Jew and a lesbian. For a biography written without access (surprise!), she is fair with her interspersing of speculation with facts. As someone with a media diet that consists primarily (solely) of western journalism, I found her descriptions of the Kursk disaster, the Beslan school hostage incident, the Moscow theater siege and Putin in general, to be eye-opening.

Gessen seems to hold a conspiratorial angle in her summary, but as a mother raising children in the heart of Moscow, can you blame her? In regards to Besland and Moscow -- “[d]id this add up to a series of carefully laid plans to strengthen Putin’s position in a country that responded best to the politics of fear?” “Not necessarily, or not quite. . . . One thing is certain: Once the hostage-takings occurred, the government task forces acting under Putin’s direct supervision did everything to ensure that the crises ended as horrifyingly as possible — to justify continued warfare in Chechnya and further crackdowns on the media and the opposition in Russia and, finally, to quell any possible criticism from the West.”

Even with the routine disappearances of journalists and lawyers, it seems that many remain naive about the cruel efficiency of the Kremlin. When a young accountant discovers a $230 million embezzlement scheme (with a trail leading possibly to the President himself), a Russian ex-pat in London offers him exile and safety. The accountant was thirty-six years old and expected justice from his country, so he stayed. As a reward, he was arrested in connection with the very scheme he had tried to expose, was imprisoned in a Moscow jail, denied medical care, and died a year later at the age of thirty-seven.

As of 2011, she described the U.S. media's take on Putin as transformed from "emerging democracy" to "authoritarian tendencies" and finally to "criminal tyranny". To catch up on the latest, her posts can be found here: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/aut...
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Feb 23, 2013 Snehil Dua rated it 3 of 5 stars

The books is well researched and is very fluently written. Very many interesting stories are told through this book, a lot of them believable.
However, the authors seemed to be very biased against Putin. I was under the impression that it was a biography of Putin, but it ended up being a summary of the Evil side of Putin. Not a single mention was made to anything positive he might have had done, considering that he has been elected thrice as the president. At most places the author forced her int...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Mal Warwick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Vladimir Putin, the KGB, and the Restoration of Soviet Russia

Every once in a while I’m shocked to learn anew that the American news media has missed the mark in its reporting of events around the world. Masha Gessen’s recent portrait of third-term Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Man Without a Face, is an excellent case in point.

For example, one year ago, in December 2011, we learned about large demonstrations in Moscow protesting the obviously rigged outcome of the latest Russian elections...more Vladimir Putin, the KGB, and the Restoration of Soviet Russia

Every once in a while I’m shocked to learn anew that the American news media has missed the mark in its reporting of events around the world. Masha Gessen’s recent portrait of third-term Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Man Without a Face, is an excellent case in point.

For example, one year ago, in December 2011, we learned about large demonstrations in Moscow protesting the obviously rigged outcome of the latest Russian elections, which had awarded nearly 50 percent of the vote to the President’s party, United Russia. What I didn’t learn from the reports I read here in America was that estimates of the crowd in Moscow ran as high as 150,000 and that “[p]rotests were held [the same day] in ninety-nine cities in Russia and in front of Russian consulates and embassies in more than forty cities around the world.” Reports in The New York Times and other U.S. news sources gave the impression that the events were the work of Russia’s tiny, long-beleaguered liberal minority and meant little. In fact, the demonstrations and marches were far more broad-based than the liberals had ever shown themselves to be capable of organizing. Masha Gessen tells the whole story in The Man Without a Face.

Or consider the experience of the brave souls who put themselves forward as candidates for President to replace Putin. It’s possible but unlikely that you came across something awhile back about Garry Kasparov, the world’s most famous Russian and the most celebrated chess player of all time, when he announced he was running for President. Kasparov could easily have attracted crowds of thousands anywhere in the vast expanses of Russia, but everywhere he went he found the doors locked at the venues he’d arranged and often found himself speaking to 50 or 100 people out-of-doors. He persisted for months nonetheless. until it was made clear to him that he was risking his life by doing so. Masha Gessen tells the whole story in The Man Without a Face.

Roughly the same thing happened to Mikhail Prokhorov, the 6’8″ Russian billionaire who bought the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) professional basketball team. When the regime asked him to be the front man for a moribund political party to give the appearance of democratic choice in the 2012 Presidential elections, Prokhorov took the assignment seriously. He mounted a vigorous campaign, fashioning an agenda for reform, traveling throughout the country, and speaking out boldly — until he was informed that if he continued to pursue the Presidency he would lose all his businesses, his freedom, and possibly his life. I’d been aware of Prokhorov’s abortive campaign, but I learned none of the rest of this from news reports in the United States. Masha Gessen tells the whole story in The Man Without a Face.

You might wonder, as I had, how the democratic path that Russia was on through most of the 1990s had veered so sharply, and so suddenly, rightward toward a brand of authoritarianism reminiscent of the tsars and the commissars. Gessen’s answer lies in the circumstances surrounding the selection of Vladimir Putin as Boris Yeltsin’s successor in 2000 by the circle of intimates known as “The Family” who surrounded the ailing Russian President.

After a decade in office, Yeltsin was gravely ill and acting erratically as a result (not because of heavy drinking, Gessen asserts). His popularity had plunged into the low single digits, and the Russian people were seeking “solace in nostalgia — not so much in Communist ideology . . . but in a longing to regain Russia’s superpower status. By 1999, there was palpable aggression in the air, and this was a large part of the reason Yeltsin and the Family were rightly terrified.” They feared the rise of an ultra-right-wing nationalist who might destroy all that they had achieved in a decade and cast about for a like-minded standard-bearer as Yeltsin’s successor who marshal popular support.

“Imagine you have a country and no one to run it,” Gessen writes. “This was the predicament that Boris Yeltsin and his inner circle thought they faced in 1999.” In desperation, knowing virtually nothing of the man’s character, his work habits, or his political beliefs, they turned to a low-level former KGB operative who had recently been elevated to head the KGB’s successor, the FSB — Vladimir Putin. They named him Premier, then Acting President when Yeltsin resigned, brought in a team of image-makers and campaign specialists, mobilized the pro-democratic community, pulled together a sanitized biography in three weeks, and ran him for President. As The Guardian wrote in its review of this book, “[g]rey, ordinary and seemingly incorruptible, Putin is the man without a face, on to whom others can project whatever they want.”

Tragically, Putin’s true nature only became apparent in the months following his election in 2000. Somehow, his self-description as a “thug” — a claim he made on many occasions — had been overlooked, and the thugocracy he built during his first two terms as Russia’s President came as a total surprise to nearly everyone except the very few who knew him well. Investigative journalists who turned up evidence of corruption or worse were simply murdered one after another, their killers never arrested. While the senseless war in Chechnya went on year after year after year, attacks by Chechen terrorists were brutally put down by the Russian military, with hundreds of civilian hostages losing their lives — even, in one case, while the terrorists were engaged in negotiations with the police. Business tycoons who refused to support the regime were imprisoned on trumped-up charges and ownership of their businesses transferred to Putin and his cronies. Putin himself built up a personal fortune rumored to be as high as $40 billion. That estimate might be exaggerated, but the total is certainly somewhere in the billions, as Putin built himself a palace on the Black Sea at a cost of more than $1 billion.

Masha Gessen knows whereof she writes. She lives in Moscow, where she has held a series of increasingly high-profile jobs in journalism. Her career had barely begun when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Man Without a Face is a personal book, and opinionated, but it represents a lifetime of work side-by-side with many of the individuals whose actions are described.(less)

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Dec 09, 2012 Tom Marcinko rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Once a spy, always a spy." You could read this and definitely come away with the impression that Putin is not a very nice person. What surprised me is his pettiness. I was hoping for a pardon for Pussy Riot, but after reading this book, I knew they didn't stand a chance. A magnanimous gesture seems beyond Putin, even one that would make him look good.

Sept. 13, 2000 Duma session: 'The speaker had interrupted the session by saying, “We have just received news that a residential building in Volgod...more "Once a spy, always a spy." You could read this and definitely come away with the impression that Putin is not a very nice person. What surprised me is his pettiness. I was hoping for a pardon for Pussy Riot, but after reading this book, I knew they didn't stand a chance. A magnanimous gesture seems beyond Putin, even one that would make him look good.

Sept. 13, 2000 Duma session: 'The speaker had interrupted the session by saying, “We have just received news that a residential building in Volgodonsk was blown up last night.” In fact, the building would not be blown up for three more days: it seems the FSB [formerly KGB] plant in the speaker’s office…had given the speaker the wrong note at the wrong time, but had known of the planned Volgodonsk explosion in advance.'

'On several occasions, at least one of them embarrassingly public, Putin has acted like a person afflicted with kleptomania. In June 2005, while hosting a group of American businessmen in St. Petersburg, Putin pocketed the 124-diamond Super Bowl ring of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. He had asked to see it, tried it on, allegedly said, “I could kill someone with this,” then stuck it in his pocket and left the room abruptly. After a flurry of articles in the U.S. press, Kraft announced a few days later that the ring had been a gift—preventing an uncomfortable situation from spiraling out of control.
'In September 2005, Putin was a special guest at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At one point his hosts brought out a conversation piece that another Russian guest must have given to the museum: a glass replica of a Kalashnikov automatic weapon filled with vodka. This gaudy souvenir costs about $300 in Moscow. Putin nodded to one of his bodyguards, who took the glass Kalashnikov and carried it out of the room, leaving the hosts speechless.
'…The correct term is probably not the popularly known kleptomania, which refers to a pathological desire to possess things for which one has little use, but the more exotic pleonexia, the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others. If Putin suffers this irrepressible urge, this helps explain his apparent split personality: he compensates for his compulsion by creating the identity of an honest and incorruptible civil servant.'

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Nov 28, 2012 Breakingviews rated it 3 of 5 stars

Review by Pierre Briançon

Twelve years after Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin first became president of Russia, we know as little about him as when Boris Yeltsin pulled him from bureaucratic anonymity to make him his last prime minister and successor. And Russians themselves still don’t know: witness both the bizarre popular support he enjoys in parts of the country, and the contemptuous hostility in which he is held by the swelling ranks of his opponents. Is he a Soviet throwback or a Russian modern...more Review by Pierre Briançon

Twelve years after Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin first became president of Russia, we know as little about him as when Boris Yeltsin pulled him from bureaucratic anonymity to make him his last prime minister and successor. And Russians themselves still don’t know: witness both the bizarre popular support he enjoys in parts of the country, and the contemptuous hostility in which he is held by the swelling ranks of his opponents. Is he a Soviet throwback or a Russian moderniser? A statesman or a crook? A closet reformist or a ruthless despot?

Masha Gessen doesn’t equivocate and tells us clearly what she thinks of the man who has just become president of Russia for the third time, in an election he probably didn’t need to rig but rigged anyway. Her book, The Man Without A Face, was originally subtitled “The Rise and Crimes of Vladimir Putin”. This was changed to the less inflammatory “The Unlikely Rise of…”, but one gets the idea.

How a third-tier KGB spook - of the paper-pushing type, not the flashy model - could become in less than 10 years the feared autocrat of the largest country in the world is one of the biggest mysteries of the world’s post-communist history. Gessen, a Russian-American reporter who has lived and worked in Moscow for the better part of 20 years, throws unforgiving light on the official version of the Putin story, which is replete with omissions and lies.

There’s no denying the quality of the investigations she has conducted on a man who has done everything to avoid such scrutiny. Gessen has looked in detail at the tricks and manipulations that allowed him to become a “democratically” elected leader back in 2000 - if, that is, the word democracy can apply to a context where Russians voted for someone they didn’t know to do something they didn’t plan.

The author at times seems to give too much credence to one or other of the multiple conspiracy theories that purport to make sense of events that might otherwise remain incomprehensible. Her narrative is powerful and she takes no prisoners. And it’s useful to remember that though Putin could have committed one or the other of the “crimes” he is accused of, it doesn’t mean he actually did. But the book is straightforward about the knowns and unknowns, and draws clear lines between facts and authorial speculation.

She does speculate, not hiding the fact that in the two decades she has worked in Moscow, she has become a militant opponent of the Kremlin strongman. But why should she affect neutrality over a leader who unleashed his army’s worst violence on Chechnya, hunted down or imprisoned the few oligarchs who dared resist him, let reporters’ assassins run free, confiscated power, silenced the courts and made his cronies and friends Russia’s new billionaires? Isn’t it precisely that militant anger that gave Gessen the energy to deconstruct the resistible rise of the small-time spy?

The world will have to wait a few years for the balanced, detached book about Putin. It will then hopefully be enriched by the flow of revelations to come in the wake of Russia’s democratisation. In the meantime Gessen’s dogged reporting and stout intellect makes her an emblematic figure for those who used to be called, not so long ago, dissidents. To that long tradition of Russia’s history belongs her superb answer to an interviewer who was recently inquiring whether she feared living in Moscow with her family, and whether she’d ever considered leaving. Russia is my home, she replied. “And if Putin doesn’t like me, he can leave.”(less)

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Sep 27, 2012 Margaret rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hands down the most important book I've read this year - pretty much everything in this book was new to me. I haven't studied Modern Russian history and am not a policy wonk but at the same time I don't live with my head in the sand. Still, the book was revelation after revelation. If you want to hear about what's been going on in Russia, particularly but not only with Putin, since the U.S. lost interest this is the book for you! If you just want to understand what's behind the jailing of Pussy...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Dmitry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics, biography

There are probably a lot of people in the West who think that Russia, having lost in the Cold War, and having ceded it's title of a super power, is no longer worth caring about. They can't be more wrong: Russia remains the largest country in the world, the richest in mineral resources, a nuclear power and a country who takes active - and aggressive - stance against its neighbors and towards world politics in general. All the more reasons to keep close attention to it - and, it being a country le...more There are probably a lot of people in the West who think that Russia, having lost in the Cold War, and having ceded it's title of a super power, is no longer worth caring about. They can't be more wrong: Russia remains the largest country in the world, the richest in mineral resources, a nuclear power and a country who takes active - and aggressive - stance against its neighbors and towards world politics in general. All the more reasons to keep close attention to it - and, it being a country led by an authoritarian regime - even closer attention to the man at the top of the "vertical of power". And yet, I would be feeling quite confident putting money on the fact, that the majority of the people in the West know next to nothing about Vladimir Putin. This book can help disperse the mist somewhat.

Gessen's writing is very personal, understandably so, considering that she knows personally many of the people mentioned in the book, and considering that some of the events touched her personally. The last few chapters of the book break out of character, and are written in a form of a diary, retelling the aftermath of the rigged election to the Duma in the December of 2011. It almost seems as if the author was making all possible haste to release the manuscript to the press before the main character has passed into history. This, sadly, hasn't happened in the 9 months since the elections, so these last chapters seem entirely out of place. Also, the author seems a bit free in her choice of her information sources, hashing together factual events, media reports, eye witness reports talking of events of decades ago, hearsay and loony conspiracy theories (although, granted, she discards some of the latter for what they are). Very few public gaffes of Putin are left unmentioned (except maybe the kissing of the boy and of the fish - google it up if curious!) Almost all of the facts are well known to anyone who speaks Russian and hasn't been living under a rock for the last 15 years, but the book would probably make a fascinating read to anyone not acquainted with Russia's recent history.

There's one rather significant gap in the otherwise quite wide narrative: that of Putin's foreign policy, ranging from staged protests against Estonia, the war against Georgia, his support of Iran and the doomed Arab regimes etc. I'm at a loss as to the reason for this gap - nothing comes to mind other than that the book may have been compiled in haste, in the fervent days of December, when the author felt the time is ripe for it, and the foreign policy aspect - one of the most interest for readers outside of Russia - was simply overlooked.(less)

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Aug 30, 2012 Billy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I do not think I have read a more chilling account of a modern day political leader. It made for a wonderful distraction to the politics of the 2012 election season. And we think we have it bad.

I'd like to see more people in the U.S. pick up this book, especially men and women of faith who could spend their efforts in a much more constructive way fighting for 'freedom of the press' in oppressive countries like Russia, rather than flaunting our freedom so carelessly with our unguarded tantrums fi...more

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Aug 30, 2012 Rita marked it as to-read

NYR 26 april 2012 by Anne Applebaum

I hope the goodreads bio [below] is outdated and that Gessen has moved back to the US - don't think her life is very safe in russia after this book.

Quotes from the Review:

Andropov [head of KGB 1967-1982] understood very precisely the danger that ‘democrats’ and other free-thinking intellectuals posed to totalitarian regimes. He spent much of his KGB career stamping out dissident movements, locking people in prison, expelling them from the USSR, and sending the...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Some pretty scary stuff here! Fascinating stuff about the head of Russia. Sometimes it seems too crazy, as wild allegations (such as bombs killing Russian citizens set up by Russian security forces) can't be backed up by evidence. But other stories are, and are shocking enough. The author thinks that Putin is a small minded, incompetent KGB man, longing for Soviet greatness, and compulsively taking whatever he can, but surely he there has to be more to him than that.
The characterizations of Put...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-politics, library, non-fiction

Masha Gessen does a marvelous job on her chronicle of Russian politics. The book is courageous, easy to read and well researched - for a book of this length. Gessen covers roughly the last 25 years of Russian politics. She shows how the attempt at democracy has failed, so far, and manages to place most of the blame on Putin. Her descriptions of Putin and his actions over the last 25 years will keep your eyes wide open far into the night. I am not sure that I would call his rise to power unlikely...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Heid Zhng rated it 4 of 5 stars

Going in completely ignorant about Russian politics, I only had the (engineered, as the author would add) picture of Putin being a badass mofo. Which apparently he really is, only in a very negative connotation that my generation of comic-and-diet-coke consumers fail to register in a real world sense.

Gessen did a great job assembling all the information - although I doubt how helpful/mind-boggling it reads to people who follow today's Russia closely - but her chronology is horrible, as other rev...more

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May 30, 2012 Erik Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The guy is such a grade A ass hole that you almost have to admire him. I am riveted by Putin, largely because I'm riveted by Russia, and one could make the case that he is the most powerful man in the world (as well as the richest). The only problem with the book is that Putin is, and has been, so secretive about everything that much of this book is conjecture. That said, nobody knows him better than Gessen, so her conjecture is as reliable as perhaps anything we're going to know for a hundred y...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Paul Pessolano rated it 2 of 5 stars

“The Man without a Face, The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin” by Masha Gessen, published by Riverhead Books.

Category – History/ Russian History

When Boris Yeltsin fell from popularity and started having health problems a search began for his successor. As unlikely a candidate as Vladimir Putin may have seemed, he has become entrenched in Soviet Politics.

Putin fought his way through Russian life and became a respected member of the KGB. Although never serving in a major role or station he was abl...more

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May 18, 2012 BoekenTrol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to BoekenTrol by: Klaas

Shelves: bookcrossing, books-i-own, dutch_language, biographies-memoirs, 2012

A very interesting look behind the scenes. Not very surprising, though. I mean, I knew from the beginning that there had to be something wrong. It was just too good to be true: a non-soviet politician, from average background climbing up to power. For us in the west (with no personal ties and reliable sources of intelligence) the first part of his climb was out of sight, so when he was suddenly there, it was quite a surprise.

What has always surprised me is, that a governement person who was port...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: russia, current-affairs

Gessen, a Russian journalist who saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, discusses how Vladimir Putin got to where he sits today. She covers the bombings Putin and his cronies at the FSB are suspected of organizing in 1999, providing plenty of circumstantial evidence to back up her claims, like the two conscripts who went into a warehouse full of bags marked "SUGAR" to get some sugar for their tea, and found that the bags actually contained RDX, the explosive used in several of the attacks. Gessen...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Madame X rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, politics

If you've been feeling guilty about ignoring Russia over the past decade, reading just enough news to realize that the political situation has gotten ugly and not enough to have a real sense of how ugly, or just how, THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE is the book for you.

Gessen lays responsibility for Russia's devolution from a fledgling democracy in the nineties to a corrupt dictatorship in the aughts at Vladimir Putin's feet, though she simultaneously argues that Putin was just one of a type, a member of...more If you've been feeling guilty about ignoring Russia over the past decade, reading just enough news to realize that the political situation has gotten ugly and not enough to have a real sense of how ugly, or just how, THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE is the book for you.

Gessen lays responsibility for Russia's devolution from a fledgling democracy in the nineties to a corrupt dictatorship in the aughts at Vladimir Putin's feet, though she simultaneously argues that Putin was just one of a type, a member of the old guard that retreated during the 90s but never went away.

When Putin was selected as Yeltsin's successor, he was an anonymous bureaucrat, a behind-the-scenes KGB agent. A nobody. Within weeks of being elected, Putin began began systematically shutting down the instruments of democracy: city councils, free elections, television stations.

Putin consolidated power around himself at the expense of his countrymen, progress, freedom, etc. As an American, it's terrifying to read about how quickly Putin dismantled the building blocks of democracy in Russia. By the time most people took notice, the damage had been done. They had no avenue of protest: the courts were rigged, the elections were rigged, the news was rigged.

And if that were Putin's sole legacy, it would be bad enough. But what really makes THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE chilling is Putin's gleeful thuggishness. Gessen spends time on the made-to-order biography of Putin published around the time of his first election. The biography is apparently full of stories about how Putin, as a scrappy youth, engaged in streetfights at the least provocation. That's what he wanted his people to know about himself -- that he was a violent, short-tempered bully.

As President, he was very gung-ho about national security. He apparently likes to threaten, in his cheerfully thuggish language, "to rub out" his enemies, or "rub them out in an outhouse". And it seems that from the first, he saw his own people as his greatest enemy. Gessen writes about the Beslan hostage crisis in 2004, when a group of Islamic separatists took a school full of children hostage. Putin ordered federal troops to attack the school; tanks fired on the gymnasium full of hostages, soldiers launched flamethrowers through gaps in the wall made by tanks. Hundreds of children died.

Gessen catalogues several similar catastrophes. During a countrywide famine, Putin was in charge of importing food from abroad for St Petersburg. He embezzled funds designated for the purpose, blocked the city council's attempts to purchase meat, and let the citizens starve. During a botched military exercise, Putin let dozens of trapped seamen die in a submarine (the Kursk) rather than accept aid from foreign divers. When he visited the widows of the fallen soldiers, he took their anger and grief as a personal affront. He ranted at them, and it was after news networks broadcast audio of his tirade that Putin decided to end freedom of the press.

And then, if that's not enough, Gessen catalogues a laundry list of murders that Putin appears to be responsible for: bizarre poisonings, assassins lurking in stairwells. Putin seems to relish a good threat and Gessen relishes the task of repeating them - everything from phone calls to police raids to one ominous incident where Garry Kasparov was splattered with ketchup.

Gessen ends the book on a hopeful note - misplaced, in retrospect. But she successfully portrays Putin as a true psychopath, a man with infinite self-regard and no concern for human life, a man with a delicate ego and no empathy, easy to offend and baffled when others find his violence outrageous.

Twenty years of Russian history turns out to be a lot for one volume, and Gessen isn't aiming to be comprehensive. I would have liked to know more about the changing economic situation in Russia, which she glosses over (diverting only to mention the wealthy entrepreneurs that Putin has put in prison, or mention Putin's personal wealth, estimated at $40 billion - a huge sum for a man who's worked for the government all his life), or how she'd managed to keep her own career alive in such a repressive, hostile regime. But this isn't the work of a historian, surrounded by books in a university somewhere. It's written in the trenches, in the first person, by a journalist who counts herself part of the opposition.

I listened to the audiobook of THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE and I absolutely loathed the narrator. She pronounced every sentence in this intense, portentous way and voiced all direct quotations in the same horrible Russian accent, as though the speakers were extremely elderly and trembling with fear. I mean this trembling, vibrating, half-moaning speech pattern that made everyone sound feeble and overcome. Awful.

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Dec 05, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

I became interested in Putin after seeing a video about Khordorkovsky. This book contains a good precis of Russian politics, without all the fluff put out by media, since the 90s. Some reviewers fault the author for being biased, but having lost as many friends as she has and having daily death threats herself, I'll allow it. I can look past her subjectivity and weigh her facts on the page, many of which I went to youtube or news searches to verify. The book is thorough and paints a picture that...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Noor rated it 5 of 5 stars

I grew up knowing Vladimir Putin as the Russian president, but nothing beyond that. I began hearing his name more frequently in the last few years, mostly in a sarcastic manner that he was basically the Russian Chuck Norris. Earlier this year, when Putin won what was widely considered to be a rigged election, I tentatively started paying attention to what was happening in the country.

The Man Without a Face was published before the 2012 Russian elections were decided. It was also written before...more

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May 06, 2013 Siria rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, current-affairs, nonfiction, politics

The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin is another example of a book which is not quite about what its title implies. Gessen documents many of the ways in which Russia under Putin is breathtakingly corrupt—how a man who's been a government official all his life has amassed a fortune of US$40bn is interesting to contemplate—and is (mostly) convincing in her argument that Putin presides over a state-authorised regime of murder, blackmail and oppression. Yet we actually find out...more

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May 19, 2012 Tariq Mahmood rated it 3 of 5 stars

Its a good introductory book about the state of Russia today with focus on Putin's regime. Russia somehow falls off the radar from the general Western media outlets enabling bullys like Putin to assert themselves. The best bit I enjoyed in this book was the author's description of her time spent with Gary Kasparov. As she witnessed one hurdle after the another orchestrated by the regime, she made a very astute observation.

'You can be the richest person in the world, you can be super popular, but...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Maria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Intressant, väldigt intressant, men dessvärre ganska hattigt skriven. Som 80-talist har jag inga direkt personliga minnen av Sovjetunionen och Putins maktövertagande och har därför svårt att hänga med när texten verkar följa en kronologisk ordning, månad för månad, bara för att flera sidor senare upptäcka att författarinnan egentligen hoppat mellan olika månader under samma år. Och jag som trodde att vi hade gått vidare till nästa år... Jag fick ingen ordning på det när årtalen inte var utskrivn...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, biography, audiobook, non-fiction, europe, politics-history

Vladimir Putin is sort of an enigma. It's hard to know what to make of him. Who is he? What is his background? How did this person who rose from the bottom of the KGB come to be such a long term fixture in Russian politics? This book looks at all this and more. Told from the perspective of a journalist (Masha Gessen), the book brings together the personalities and the events of recent Russian history.

I didn't know much about Putin at all before listening to this book except for the fact that fir...more Vladimir Putin is sort of an enigma. It's hard to know what to make of him. Who is he? What is his background? How did this person who rose from the bottom of the KGB come to be such a long term fixture in Russian politics? This book looks at all this and more. Told from the perspective of a journalist (Masha Gessen), the book brings together the personalities and the events of recent Russian history.

I didn't know much about Putin at all before listening to this book except for the fact that first he was Prime Minister of Russia and then he stepped aside for Dmitri Medvedyev, only to come back as Prime Minister fairly recently. In Political Science terms, this would be looked at as an observation in how Russia isn't quite fully democratic and may be sliding backwards in the political freedom department.

The book recounts Putin's early biography from his childhood to his career as a KGB operative to his political rise through his controversial political career all against the backdrop of a vastly and quickly changing country. It was interesting to see how just being in the "right place at the right time" contributed to his rise. A lot of his background I didn't know. He was sort of a weird guy, just sort of off kilter and I thought it was really interesting to see that.

Some parts of the book were very hard to listen to. There were many political gaffes where people's lives hung in the balance and yet no action was taken (the Kursk (sp?) submarine issue, the Chechen school issue, the taking of the Moscow theater). I had forgotten about a lot of these events and how Putin handled or did not handle the books. It was sort of crazy to see how by trying to make himself look good, Putin would step on anyone that was in his way.

I feel like this book gave me a much better insight into why Russian politics and Russia itself are the way that they are. So much of Russia's recent history has been entangled with one man, that being Putin.

The audiobook version of this book is great. The narrator did a good job with all of the different accents of the people in the book.

Bottom line: History and politics lovers will enjoy this book.
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Mar 26, 2012 Sooz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Putin is a very very scary man. anyone with the kind of power he weilds is scary. but does that make him a bad man? a bad leader? mmmm.....

in The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein -focusing on America post-Katina and 9-11 - details how governments use fear during crisis to pass -and put into law- things the public would never allow during more stable times. Putin is a master at the technique. according to Masha Gessen's book he is not above enflaming or completely fabricating a situation so it plays o...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Marsha rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book details Vladimir Putin's rise to power, and how he has methodically, brutally and illegally stifled Russia's attempts at democracy. This is a scary book--by murdering and imprisoning any dissenting voices, Putin's government has taken over or silenced all media, major companies and political parties or competitors. He has orchestrated acts of terror within his own country so that he can blame people or states (like Chechnya) and take action against them. The author still lives in Mosco...more

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