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Title details for Putin Country by Anne Garrles - Available

Putin Country

A Journey Into the Real Russia

by Anne Garrles
Anne Garrels
Audiobook
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More than twenty years ago, longtime NPR correspondent Anne Garrels began to visit the region of Chelyabinsk, an aging military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. Her goal was to chart the social and political aftershocks of the USSR's collapse. On her trips to an area once closed to the West, Garrels discovered a populace for whom the new democratic freedoms were as traumatic as they were delightful. The region suffered a severe economic crisis in the early 1990s, and the next twenty years would only bring more turmoil as well as a growing identity crisis and antagonism toward foreigners. The city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as corruption and intolerance grew more entrenched. In Putin Country, we meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a group of determined evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers try to cope with a corrupt system. Drawing on these encounters, Garrels explains why Vladimir Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they encounter from day to day.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 15, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781681680699
      • File size: 236461 KB
      • Duration: 08:12:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Former NPR reporter Anne Garrels, who has worked in Russia on and off for decades, delivers a terrific narration of her own fascinating look at the current state of the former Soviet Union. That state is complex and often not good. Yet with her sense of storytelling narrative and eye for detail, Garrels makes the occasionally awful tale a compelling listen. She focuses on the city of Chelyabinsk, a longtime military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow, which has undergone enormous changes--good and bad--since the economic collapse of the 1990s and the rise of Putin. Garrels's low, husky voice is pleasant, and she reads clearly and expressively at just the right pace. Whatever news she's delivering, it's mesmerizing. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 25, 2016
      Twenty-five years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet Russia is still without a stable national identity or a functioning democracy. Garrels (Naked in Baghdad), a former NPR foreign correspondent, illuminates these observations in her journey into the everyday lives of 21st-century Russians. As she demonstrates, decades of economic turmoil, political corruption, and the mass emigration of young and wealthy Russians to America and Western Europe have taken a heavy toll. Using the region of Chelyabinsk, formerly the site of the USSR’s nuclear program, as a microcosm, the author profiles citizens from all walks of life with compassion and sincerity. Among the different people interviewed, two of the main constants are support for Vladimir Putin and the belief that the West is more at fault for the poverty and corruption surrounding them than their own government. While Garrels takes pain to include voices willing to condemn Putin’s administration in her exposé, most of the interviewees are either unaware of, or willfully blind to, the worst of their government. This book persuasively asserts that too little has changed in Russia since the days of the Soviet Union.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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