Aug. 9, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: 'Putin's Labyrinth' Exposes 'Dark Heart' of the New Russia
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
As I sit at my computer writing a review of Steve LeVine's "Putin's Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia" (Random House, 224 pages, $26), I'm also listening to news accounts on TV of a widening conflict between Russia and its former Soviet Republic of Georgia, now an independent nation.
LeVine writes about a Russia embolded by escalating oil wealth and hell-bent on restoring the superpower status the nation enjoyed as the former Soviet Union. To no one's surprise, Vladimir Putin, former president of Russia and now its prime minister, is the man LeVine targets for the suspicious deaths of journalists such as American Paul Klebinov and Russian Anna Politkovskaya, shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building -- on Putin's birthday, Oct. 7, 2006. Putin reinstated -- although some could claim that it never had lifted, even in the Gorbachev era -- a climate of fear that has been a hallmark of Russia since its creation.
Politkovskaya, a fearless investigative journalist -- I can imagine Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep or Judi Dench playing her in a movie -- was a thorn in the side of Putin, former head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, for her coverage of Chechnya and the conflicts in the 1990s that continue today.
Klebinov, an American who was proud of his aristocratic Russian forebears, was the editor of Forbes Russia. He may have been killed -- shot on the evening of July 9, 2004 near his office -- for doing what's routine in the States -- compiling a Russian version of the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in Russia. He had also written a scathing 2000 book about the "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky, titled "Godfather of the Kremlin," that may have incurred the wrath of the billionaire, who had successfully sued Klebinov for libel in the 1990s.
LeVine, who lived and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade in his 18 years as a foreign correspondent, provides the historical background for the "culture of death" that has been a Russian tradition since the beginning of the nation and continues under the all-powerful Putin. The "culture of death" includes targeted assassinations of the Russia's perceived enemies to the Kremlin's indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered at the "Nord-Ost" performance in a Moscow theatre or in a school in Beslan or civilians are killed in cities and villages in Chechnya.
Further, LeVine says, Putin's autocratic regime -- no one doubts that this clever lawyer and veteran spymaster controls the strings of the current president, Dmitri Medvedev -- even blames the victims of poisonings and shootings, not to mention a journalist on the verge of publishing a major story of state corruption who conveniently "committed suicide" by jumping off his apartment balcony. LeVine reminds us that many suspicious -- and convenient -- "accidents" occurred in the Stalin era to those targeted by the brutal dictator.
One of the centerpieces of "Putin's Labyrinth" is LeVine's investigation of the 2006 death of defector Alexander Litvinenko in London. LeVine traces the steps of this KGB-spy-turned-dissident on his way to being poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. The author, in a series of interviews in San Bernardino, CA with a KGB defector who was nearly killed in strangely similar circumstances fifty years earlier, shows the "Groundhog Day" similarity of recent events with those of a half century before.
LeVine's book reads like a spy thriller, but I wish the publishers had gone the extra mile and provided an index. Sources -- LeVine is an outstanding reporter who has worked on the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and now is chief foreign affairs writer for BusinessWeek -- are documented and a bibliography is included, but -- as I've said in the past -- every nonfiction book needs a good index.
"Putin's Labyrinth" is an extremely readable account that is as timely as today's news stories. I recommend it without reservation.
Web site: www.putinslabyrinth.com
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BOOK REVIEW: 'Putin's Labyrinth' Exposes 'Dark Heart' of the New Russia
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
As I sit at my computer writing a review of Steve LeVine's "Putin's Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia" (Random House, 224 pages, $26), I'm also listening to news accounts on TV of a widening conflict between Russia and its former Soviet Republic of Georgia, now an independent nation.
LeVine writes about a Russia embolded by escalating oil wealth and hell-bent on restoring the superpower status the nation enjoyed as the former Soviet Union. To no one's surprise, Vladimir Putin, former president of Russia and now its prime minister, is the man LeVine targets for the suspicious deaths of journalists such as American Paul Klebinov and Russian Anna Politkovskaya, shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building -- on Putin's birthday, Oct. 7, 2006. Putin reinstated -- although some could claim that it never had lifted, even in the Gorbachev era -- a climate of fear that has been a hallmark of Russia since its creation.
Politkovskaya, a fearless investigative journalist -- I can imagine Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep or Judi Dench playing her in a movie -- was a thorn in the side of Putin, former head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, for her coverage of Chechnya and the conflicts in the 1990s that continue today.
Klebinov, an American who was proud of his aristocratic Russian forebears, was the editor of Forbes Russia. He may have been killed -- shot on the evening of July 9, 2004 near his office -- for doing what's routine in the States -- compiling a Russian version of the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in Russia. He had also written a scathing 2000 book about the "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky, titled "Godfather of the Kremlin," that may have incurred the wrath of the billionaire, who had successfully sued Klebinov for libel in the 1990s.
LeVine, who lived and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade in his 18 years as a foreign correspondent, provides the historical background for the "culture of death" that has been a Russian tradition since the beginning of the nation and continues under the all-powerful Putin. The "culture of death" includes targeted assassinations of the Russia's perceived enemies to the Kremlin's indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered at the "Nord-Ost" performance in a Moscow theatre or in a school in Beslan or civilians are killed in cities and villages in Chechnya.
Further, LeVine says, Putin's autocratic regime -- no one doubts that this clever lawyer and veteran spymaster controls the strings of the current president, Dmitri Medvedev -- even blames the victims of poisonings and shootings, not to mention a journalist on the verge of publishing a major story of state corruption who conveniently "committed suicide" by jumping off his apartment balcony. LeVine reminds us that many suspicious -- and convenient -- "accidents" occurred in the Stalin era to those targeted by the brutal dictator.
One of the centerpieces of "Putin's Labyrinth" is LeVine's investigation of the 2006 death of defector Alexander Litvinenko in London. LeVine traces the steps of this KGB-spy-turned-dissident on his way to being poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. The author, in a series of interviews in San Bernardino, CA with a KGB defector who was nearly killed in strangely similar circumstances fifty years earlier, shows the "Groundhog Day" similarity of recent events with those of a half century before.
LeVine's book reads like a spy thriller, but I wish the publishers had gone the extra mile and provided an index. Sources -- LeVine is an outstanding reporter who has worked on the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and now is chief foreign affairs writer for BusinessWeek -- are documented and a bibliography is included, but -- as I've said in the past -- every nonfiction book needs a good index.
"Putin's Labyrinth" is an extremely readable account that is as timely as today's news stories. I recommend it without reservation.
Web site: www.putinslabyrinth.com
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