"Once you accept that the impossible is really possible, what happens in Russia makes perfect sense."
In December 2013, David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War. The Moscow Times said it was not surprising he was expelled, "it was surprising that it took so long." Satter is known in Russia for having written that the apartment bombings in 1999, which were blamed on Chechens and brought Putin to power, were actually carried out by the Russian FSB security police.
In this book, Satter tells the story of the apartment bombings and how Boris Yeltsin presided over the criminalization of Russia, why Vladimir Putin was chosen as his successor, and how Putin has suppressed all opposition while retaining the appearance of a pluralist state. As the threat represented by Russia becomes increasingly clear, Satter's description of where Russia is and how it got there will be of vital interest to anyone concerned about the dangers facing the world today.
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Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in the Russia' failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state.
Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and individual Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.
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Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: a country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. In this book, David Satter depicts the 1990s reform period through the experiences of individual citizens. By showing the contrast during the reform period between the desperation of the many and the insatiability of the few, he draws a stark portrait of massive injustice at a time when Russia was supposedly entering the civilized world. Satter considers why the individual in Russia has historically counted for so little And he offers an illuminating analysis of how Russia?s post-Soviet fate was decided when a new morality failed to fill the vast moral vacuum that communism left in its wake.
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