The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladmir Putin

by Masha Gessen

Hurt and aggression have a way of rendering people blind.

As a description of the decision-making process for appointing the head of the main security agency of a nuclear power, this conversation sounds so absurd, I am actually inclined to believe it.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A THUG The group Berezovsky had assembled to write Putin’s biography had only three weeks to produce a book. Their list of sources was limited: they had Putin himself—six long sit-down interviews—his wife; his best friend; a former teacher; and a former secretary

new law, Article 190’ of the Penal Code, made it a crime to “spread rumors or information detrimental to the Soviet societal and governmental structure,” giving the KGB virtually unlimited power in hunting down and fighting those who dared to think differently.

In other words, said the incoming president of Russia, if the law got in the way of his ideas of how things should be done, that would be too bad for the law.

was a perfect mixture of Slavophile anti-Western fear-mongering and Western antiliberal fear-mongering, a sweet potion for a country that had always drawn strength and unity from fear-mongering.