Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution

by Peter Baker, Susan Glasser

In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents.

With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin.

During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia.

But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show how the political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia.

With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.

Genres: Russia, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Russian History, Political Science, Social Science

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

There is more than one author with this name in the database.

Peter Baker has been a journalist for the Washington Post and the New York Times. He covered President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, resulting in the book The Breach. As the Post's Moscow bureau chief, he wrote the book Kremlin Rising. He is married to the journalist Susan Glasser.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the 1990s, they told us that there is Communism and there is democracy, and nothing else in between," Laptev said. "That is not right. It is not a choice between black and white. I've lived under communists, I've lived under democrats. It doesn't work." (305)

"This was a president in an unusual televised address from the Kremlin, to boast about the Soviet Union again as well as the empire that preceded it. "Was there nothing but Stalin's prison camps and repression?" he asked. "What about the achievements of Soviet science, of the spectacular space flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, of the art and music of cultural heroes like the composer Dmitri Shostakovich?" It was time, he said, to be proud again." (65)

"Beyond Chechnya, neighbouring republics saw a new spasm of political assassinations, coordinated guerrilla attacks, and bombings all seemingly designed to underscore the point that Putinism was pokazukha, a show of fake stability manufactured for television and shallowed by a viewing audience that was eager to embrace it. (379)

When one begins examining the terrible atrocities happening in the Ukraine, it's invaluable to go back 20 years and look at the genesis of Vladimir Putin's presidency and what factors shook Russia in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Russia during that time was in a fast upheaval where Western values including democracy, free speech, clothing, and business were all being flirted with. However, as one interviewee in the book points out, "the 1990's were a big party, but when it came time to cash out, nobody was prepared to take responsibility for the bill." So we see a sort of redaction of Post-Soviet ideals; a circling back of values where the transition from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin brought repeats of many ideals under the Soviet Union, just with new names disguised as old political visions. This sociology is what the team of Peter Baker and Susan Glasser discuss in "Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution."

The book begins discussing the duality in terms of post Soviet realities in the early 2000's. On one side sits people like Tatyana Shalimova, who's life in Moscow involves high heels and Ray-Ban's, intoxicated by the economic possibilities of new Russia. On the other side sits her brother who lives in Mokshan, making a poor living in a house with no hot water, no toilet, and no telephone. There's a sentence that describes "ruins of an old system and no more than rare glimpses of something new to replace it" on page one. This is a common theme during the course of this book: how Russia exists in two worlds but feels broken nonetheless. We then move onto a topic after this introduction that amongst other critical historical aspects is certainly defining: Chechnya. Besides religious preferences, Chechnya of the early 2000's and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 share quite a bit in common. Chechnya wished to branch off from Russia to become it's own identity which set off the first war with it in 1994. Russian troops flooded in committing atrocities and gave rise to a fraction of separatists of which Putin liked to compare to Russia's Al Qaeda. From there we see the violence and devastation in the school in Beslan in 2004 and later in the book the hostage situation in Moscow in 2002 known as the Nord-Ost siege. It's a cluster of inhumanity.

Kremlin Rising's chapters are so purposely titled. Titles like "Project Putin," or "Sick Man of Europe," or "Back in the USSR" so perfectly encapsulate the topics in their pages. Baker and Glasser interview Russians from all walks of life. Here we witness the takeover of free-speech news networks, wrangling in of rich Oligarchs, the tension and war crimes in Chechnya, the AIDS/HIV and drug crisis, the poor state of the army with new recruits, the bending of laws that benefit the Kremlin, and the censoring of history books used in schools. At the center of it all is Vladimir Putin, who becomes a puppet-master who know's just what strings to pull. He's a spider at the center of a web who knows each thread of it and how to manipulate it to his own desires. To understand what's happening in Ukraine, you must understand Russia and Vladimir Putin and this book is a terrific way to get started in that understanding of this madness.

Rating 4.5/5

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rude awakenings, these watershed moments. This outright interference. Just when you think you've got it under control.

You've fired all the political holdovers in your government and replaced them with fellow FSB operatives guaranteed to share your world view. You've commandeered the media outlets; not one issue is raised that you haven't approved. You've bounced those upstart oligarchs out of town. You've scorched the earth of Chechnya. These charities, these NGOs, righteously exiled under suspicion of espionage! Every single troublemaker is either dead or on the run. Democracy, this chaotic idea, like a wild horse you've finally hobbled. The clock is turning back, so reassuringly, to a familiar ideal; to a place of safety. Safe enough now to recover those territories that should never have been permitted to split apart. Safe enough now to recover all that was lost. Until some idiot rebel uses that missile launcher you so generously provided to shoot down a Malaysian passenger jet.

And now you've got to remember that you don't own the media in the wider world, and you're not in control of the investigation, and there are many leaders with comparable resources and comparable powers who simply aren't those fellow FSB operatives willing to strong-arm the facts and spin the realities for the greater Russian good. And all the theories you float to calm them down, to alert them, to inform them, to generate this more palatable truth, are sinking to the bottom of the bloody Black Sea. You're actually being accused. You're actually being chastised.

He must hate this world and the infuriating way it blocks him at every turn.

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post from January 2001 to November 2004, present a highly-accessible and engaging account of Putin's rise to power and subsequent consolidation of same. Here you will find a thumbnail bio, the career path, the elections. The crises of the Kursk submarine, the Beslan school, and Moscow's Nord-Ost theater tragedy are illuminated alongside Putin's disturbingly ineffective course of anti-engagement. Chechnya, AIDS, the courts, the malls, the oil, the censorship of television stations, newspapers, history books; every forum of report and opinion - all of this is touched upon.

Kremlin Rising is a fine primer for those interested in Putin's Russia. Definitely a good place to start.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is common now to ask whether American Presidential candidates can "handle Putin and the Chinese", so it is of the greatest interest to see the mutual compliments given each other by the Master Negotiator and the Russian potentate. After all, Putin expressed admiration for Trump and since that is all that matters in his view, Trump returned the compliment. Which reminds me of the last time an American politician and Putin slapped each other on the back, when then-President Bush saw into the Russian's soul, calling him "an honest, straightforward man" in public and "one cool dude" in private, as Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reveal in "Kremlin Rising". Baker and Glasser implicitly make the case that Putin sized up and manipulated the American President by wearing a cross that he said was preserved when the Russian's dacha burned to the ground. That of course was well before the Ukraine and Syria, but not before Putin's tendencies toward authoritarian tendencies began to show, not to mention the disregard for the fate of individual Russians, foreshadowed by his initial indifference to the sinking of the submarine Kursk and later bungled rescue of its sailors. Baker and Glasser weave back and forth between Putin's Moscow-centered construction of what was early on called "managed democracy" (an oxymoron worthy of standing beside the Marxist "centralized democracy", perhaps as offspring) and the individual citizens failing to reform the judiciary or the army, attempting to teach young students, or even just trying to survive economically in a nation where businesses need "protection". The overall impression is that what Putin has sold the Russian people is a bargain in which they cede their rights (which never took root during the corrupt Yeltsin years anyway) for the "protection" that the strong man offers. Yet, in key moments that protective element has failed, not just with the submarine, but in the government's approach to terrorist attacks on a theater in Moscow and a school in Beslan; it seems like the least that a people could ask of its government is not to respond to dire emergencies in a way that causes even more bloodshed. And by any measure of the effort to create a modern nation--a functioning democracy, an independent judiciary , media that is not an arm of the governing faction, armed forces that don't brutalize their recruits almost as much as the enemy, a public health system that actually seeks to prevent citizens from becoming ill and cares for them when they do--the protection trade-off has failed. Not that the Yeltsin decade was much better; if anything, the failure of that regime to replace the Soviets with anything better than violence, chaos, and corruption is in some ways the best argument for Putin. Baker and Glasser try to be fair; they are skeptical of the oligarch and latter-day democrat Mikhail Khodorkovsky and of the Yeltsin circle in general, and note Putin's tentative nods and eventual retreats from judicial and army reform. But the overall impression is of darkness gathering, inventing as it goes along means of leashing the media, rigging the electoral system, rewarding friends and punishing enemies, a graceless but increasingly forceful show of strength in a world where that is the greatest value. This is an image from after "Kremlin Rising" was published but I remember the long opening sequence of the Olympics, which treated hammer and sickle as just another historical era, praising Russia's industrialization. There was also a plea that Russians reverse their long demographic shrinkage (Lenin noted that the Russian soldiers of the First World War I voted with their feet; evidently, their descendants are voting with their rates of reproduction and emigration). And the Games took place in Sochi, the resort at which Putin could not be bothered to cut short his vacation during the Kursk crisis. All that said, the endurance of the Putin regime cannot be ascribed to manipulation; the oil economy that has aided regimes from Chavez' Venezuela to the Gulf states has given Putin both an argument for staying in power and a weapon against European states reliant on Russian gas. That power-for-growth equation has been altered, one would think for the worse, by the current oil glut. Thus in part, the Ukraine and Syria.

[King · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Washington Post is "my" newspaper, the one I grew up reading as a kid in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. This book's authors were, until a couple years ago, the Post's Moscow bureau chiefs (I remember reading the article versions of some of these chapters). Anyway, even with a new Russian president-elect set to take the reigns in a few months, the book's exploration of Putin's tactics remains relevant. The writing is crisp and offers both insight and interesting trivia. It's one thing to read about events like the sinking of the Kursk in the form of newspaper articles; quite another to get the detailed behind the scenes action of such an event (a bit like the difference between snapshots and movies). I look forward to the sequel, which will likely fall on the shoulders of the Post's latest Moscow bureau chief, Peter Finn. :-)

[Tandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers the current situation in Russia really well. It is well written and written at a level that anyone can pick it up and read it without having background knowledge of Russia and her politics. It is well researched it covers things I have read about in newspapers and other books and puts them in this one book. I recommend this book as a place to turn to get up to speed on what is going on in Russia and with Russia's elections coming up a lot of people might want to read about the events leading up to the election.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent analysis and presentation of the current state of Russian politics and society. It is very comprehensive and accessible to readers who might not follow Russian current events as closely as dorks like me. I only wish I had read this closer to the beginning of my time in Russia.

[Michael Gerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scathing attack on Putin that should be read with caution as it was written by Western journalists.

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

what a waste. some genuinely good journalism hidden in a sea of neuroticism

[Alex Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winston Churchill once famously described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Two Moscow correspondents for the Washington Post were among the first Western reporters to pull back the shroud of mystery over Putin's Russia by writing an interesting, anthological account of the country from 2000-2004, devoting chapters to key events like the Kursk disaster, the Beslan school attack, and the Second Chechen war. They put flesh-and-blood on these flashpoints with a rich, reportorial style (the blow-by-blow accounts of Beslan and the 2002 Moscow theater attack were fascinating) and even got key Kremlin insiders to talk to them about Putin's handling of these events.

Putin is central to the book's account- his unlikely rise to power and ruthless consolidation of it are the closest thing the book has to a narrative backbone - but the authors don't miss the trees for the forest and are keen on providing the reader with a snapshot of ordinary life in early 2000s Russia: there are interesting sidebar accounts of Russia's AIDS epidemic, the growth of anti-Western nationalism in the Russian cultural scene, and the introduction of jury trials in the Russian justice system.

Still, this is a book about Russia's democratic erosion in the early 2000s after the nascent (and very flawed) democratic experiment of the 90s. Putin was keen on ending the chaos of the Yeltsin era by instituting a "power vertical" with himself on the top and a loyal cadre of ex-KGB agents and military officers (the siloviki ) disseminating orders down the chain of command. Baker and Glasser take the reader through the key moments of these changes. President Boris Yeltsin and his coterie decided to protect their interests by handing over power to Putin, then an unknown security apparatchik, on the last day of the millennium. Putin initially pledged fealty to the fledgling democracy born from the ashes of the Soviet collapse, then slowly chipped away at it. His inept handling of the Kursk submarine disaster, initially refusing foreign assistance that might have saved the doomed sailors while lying about key details of the sinking, led to heated criticism from the press, particularly from the independent TV station NTV. The entire saga convinced him to clamp down on press freedoms: NTV was seized by the Russian government in April 2001. Other press outlets got the message and soon towed the Kremlin line. Next, having warned the oligarchs as early as July 2000 that they could keep their fortunes if they stayed out of politics, he won a power struggle in 2003 against one tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who refused to bend the knee. The last dominos fell in the December 2003 parliamentary elections that saw Putin loyalists win huge majorities while the still-formidable Communist Party was reduced to a shadow of itself; Putin's re-election in March 2004 was all but a formality.

The most tumultuous events of this period came from Chechnya, though. The Chechen conflict reignited in 1999 and took a particularly savage course as Russian forces indiscriminately bombarded Grozny, capital of Chechnya. Chechen terrorists struck back with savage fury with brutal assaults on the Dubrovka theater in Moscow in 2002 and the Beslan school in 2004. Baker and Glasser paint a particularly dismal portrait of Putin during these attacks: in the former, he authorized a daring raid on the theater that included the use of chemical agents pumped through the ventilation system to drug the assailants. Of course, this meant the hostages were also gassed, and 130 of them never woke up. Putin claimed a dubious victory and then blocked any formal inquiry into the events. With the Beslan crisis, Putin was apparently paralyzed by indecision and played virtually no role in the resolution of the crisis, with security forces making a direct assault on the school. State media lied about the number of hostages held in the school and even broadcast soap operas while the assault was underway. Putin's only public reaction to the crisis was to give a speech attacking the Western powers, quickly followed by an executive order cancelling gubernatorial elections in all of Russia’s eighty-nine regions. Governors from now on were to be appointed directly by Putin.

Having written such a negative portrait of Putin's Russia in 2005, the authors are entitled to take a victory lap given current events, but certain aspects of the book left me cold. Perhaps because both authors are American journalists with no prior experience of reporting in a foreign land, there is a tendency in the book to "Orientalize" Russia; implications that perhaps Western notions of liberalism, pluralism, and transparency in government are beyond the grasp of impervious Russians. There was a passage in the chapter about the Chechen war that compared "brutal" Russian methods of fighting with the more "humane" American campaign in Iraq, which elicited an eye roll from me. Baker and Glasser are also quick to chide Putin supporters for wanting "order" after the turbulence of the 90s, but given the realities of that dismal decade: economic collapse, skyrocketing mortality rates, political chaos, rampant gangsterism, corruption, and Russia's loss of its superpower status, this desire is at least understandable. The chapters on Putin's failed bromance with George W. Bush show a similar lack of understanding of Russia's point of view. I don't think it's fair to characterize the fraying of US-Russian relations simply as the result of Russia's democratic backsliding, as the authors imply. They note the numerous ways in which Russia worked with the United States after the 9/11 attacks, even granting the US military permission to fly over Russian territory for the campaign in Afghanistan, yet the US rewarded Russia by withdrawing from the ABM treaty and expanding NATO to Russia's doorstep. Putin felt he made huge concessions to the US and got nothing in return. The seeds of future conflict between the two sides were thus laid. And, despite Putin's cynical motives, the flattering depiction of ruthless tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a democratic reformer was hard to swallow.

Overall, this is a nice introductory text of Russia in the early Putin years. Despite its flaws, you can read this book and still get a basic sense of how the democratic promise of the 90s was strangled in the crib by ruthless KGB hands who wanted to reassert Russia's place in the world.

[Steven Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first received KREMLIN RISING as a gift, I wasn't sure how useful I'd find it at this point. The material covered, I'd already read in other sources: the chaos of the Yeltin era, Putin's moves to usurp the Russian constitution and to bring the oligarchs under his thumb, and his disdain for democratic institutions and the West in general. Still, I delved into it, wanting to see how Vladimir Putin and his ilk corrupted Russia at the source before spreading globally.

I was very sorely mistaken. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser did an excellent job detailing what they saw during their time as correspondents for the Washington Post. They were on the ground as Putin came into power, reported as he expanded the war in Chechnya and police powers aimed towards the populace, watched as he did nothing while AIDS and opiate epidemics ravaged the nation, and then eventually brought all would-be challengers to his power to heel in true Soviet fashion.

One of the key takeaways is in the later pages of the book, when Putin is running for reelection. Several people disagree with Putin's politics, yet somehow inexplicably like him. When the choices in the election were Western-style democrats or Putin, the people interviewed overwhelmingly chose Putin due to the democrats being associated with Yeltsin and the chaos and banditry of his time. Their exposure to democracy and capitalism was one of uncontrolled crony capitalism, and to a people who have known only authoritarianism for almost the entirety of their existence, the experience was negative and foreign.

KREMLIN RISING is definitely must-read material for those looking to educate themselves on foreign policy. While its events firmly take place during the Bush Administration, it shows that President Bush made mistakes that President Obama would later repeat, and also shows that the writing was on the wall for what moves Putin would make next, including the invasion of Crimea and Donbass and interfering in the 2016 US Presidential Elections. It also further vindicates Mitt Romney's assessment in 2012 that Russia was the US's most pressing geopolitical threat, an assessment of which President Obama would later see the validity and that President Trump would do well to acknowledge.

[Gergely · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's particularly interesting to read this book 10 years after it's original publication. Looking back, what we have seen since the key tenets of 'managed democracy' were introduced by Putin during 2000-2005, has been a stagnation of a system whose pillars have effectively been in place for a decade now. Russians have on the whole been accepting of this way of being ruled by their government. Certain borders have been reached in the way that for example freedom of expression is curtailed, media controlled, law treated as an instrument for the furthering of government's interest, in for example the selective use of punishment for corruption, all as a means of control. In reality the government has not been encroached much further on these points than it already was when this book went to press, with other remaining freedoms such as internet access and freedom of travel left largely untouched.

The second instalment of this fascinating book may well have to be written soon however, as a deteriorating Russian economy, a more restless economic elite and a country looking at years of international isolation ahead, including from their nearest neighbours such as Georgia previously and now Ukraine, take their burden on an ageing Putin and his outdated system. Should the pressure mount, it's an interesting question as to whether Putin would introduce more liberal reforms to allow society to let off some steam or double down against any opposition. As someone always who at heart is a pragmatist rather than an ideolog, it would be wrong to dismiss the chances of the former.

Alluded to in the Afterword of the 2007 edition, the disinformation being spewed into the public domain about external threats, namely that Western liberal democracies are against Russia per se rather than against the authoritarian and illiberal bent of Putin's government, will help prop up a corrupt regime for some years ahead. Ultimately however, as this book addresses only indirectly, the system is sadly yet another example of unsustainable and backward rule for Russia and the question is of when and not if the false dawn of Putinism makes way for the next chapter in this country's tumultuous history.

[Justin Tapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love Russia, or know someone who does, or have concern for someone who lives there then this book is for you. A great record of what's happened in the last 6 years under Putin. Things are getting worse and less free in Russia, not better. People who say "the verdict is still out on Putin," should probably read this book. In the past few years most "free" speech has been virtually outlawed, all TV media is now state-owned, oil and gas have been renationalized, the quagmire in Chechnya has continued, and all political parties and elections are now controlled by Putin and his party. My personal belief is that in 5-10 years you will no longer see Western missionaries allowed to live in Russia.

I found a good example of the censorship that the book talks about just yesterday. One of the websites that I used to frequent for information on Chechnya and to chat with Caucasus peoples was shut down. Kafkazcenter.com was housed in Sweden, where the Russian embassy allegedly convinced Swedish authorities to raid their offices and confiscate their servers for inciting terrorism. The site is very pro-Islam, and anti-Russian authority. You can find info on rebel attacks there that you won't see on any other news source. It's back up and running, for now, on Lithuanian servers.

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A revealing and provocative look at the developments going on in post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin. As an aspiring scholar of Russia myself, I was strongly impressed with the depth of the disturbing trends revealed by Baker and Glasser in this book. The pair demonstrate the crackdown on democracy and free speech, the brutality of the war in Chechnya, the disturbing realities of the health and legal systems and the corruption rife in contemporary society in, at times, disturbing detail.

The book shows a Russia which is resurgent on the international stage but decaying from the inside out in terms of political institutions and public well-being, and shows a government increasingly willing to explicitly lie to and deceive its own people for the sake of political expediency.

A very readable book, I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in what's going on in Russia today and how Putin's leadership, for good or ill, has transformed Russian society.

[Bubba · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those of us in the West, and in its former satellites, who cheered the demise of the Soviet Union, it may be hard to make sense of Russia's current political tragectory. But, for those poor folks who saw their proud Empire turn into a chaotic mess under Yeltsin's experiments in Democracy and market economics, the brittle authoritarianism of Putin has its benefits. If you want to know what's up in Russia since the rise of Putin, you should read this book. A Soviet premier he is not, but neither is he a democrat. His country is not a police-state yet. The future will tell where it will go. Suffice it to say that Russia has suffered under autocrats for 10 centuries, endured horrible famines, devastating invasions, revolutionary upheavals, and more blood, chaos and oppresion that, probably, any other country. It's future doesn't look much brighter.

[Douglas Graney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in anticipation of bringing my students to the Embassy of Russia and/or a meeting with a State Dept official regarding Russia.

Prior to either or both of those taking place, the author Peter Baker agreed to talk to my students about his book. That will probably happen in October or November.

As for the book, I read it with the plan to make excerpts for my students. I will be using quite a bit of this book. Some of the areas I didn't feel I would use and skimmed through those. That being said, if you want to know what Putin's time in power was like (at least through most of the last decade)this is THE source.

It will also make recent events much more understandable.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was just amazing in capturing the path and societal context of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and his consolidation of it. Baker and Glasser start with Yeltsin’s political considerations in elevating an unknown Putin and then follow Putin’s aggressive moves to grab the reins of power from all those who thought they could control or oppose him. Along the way, the authors discuss everything from the war in Chechnya to the state of Russia’s healthcare system and its armed forces. In this way the authors give the reader a thorough context in which to understand the world in which Putin came to power and the difficulty of his opponents in rallying popular support against him.

[Colby McAnally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extended work of high-quality journalism. I would recommend to anyone trying to understand how Putin came to power and the transformations Russia underwent in the early 00’s as a result. I found the book at times to border on monotonous. The chapters can become repetitive, but otherwise a solid work.

[Francine Uenuma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baker and Glasser used to be bureau chiefs in Moscow, and describe Putin's gradual repression of many of the freedoms gained in Russia post-Cold War. Not a comprehensive history but makes for a quick read.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

If your knowledge about Russian history ends with the fall of the USSR, this book fills in the recent history gap with first-hand observation and analysis about what major events and decisions by Putin meant and how they effected the development of Russia after he came into power.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful look into modern day Russia, and Putin. Mildly disturbing, but amazingly well done.

[katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

people should give putin a chance. poor putin. he goes and has a few people "offed" and now everyone is jumping down his throat. come on, people.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

so fascinating and fun to read! not a narrative, but reads like one with many stories in it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE best post soviet history of russia I have read. Wonderful!

[Owen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The most readable of the anti-Putin diatribes.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems more of us should have read this when it was published in 2005. It's depressing to see the authors' early pessimism about Putin's rule in Russia turn out to be so justified.

[skip thurnauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser spent 4 years as Moscow bureau chiefs for the Washington Post. They provide remarkable insights into Vladimir Putin's surprising rise to power and the transformation of post-Soviet Russia back into a authoritarian state or, in the words of the Beatles, Russia is headed "Back [to] the USSR." Baker and Glasser open with "Fifty-two Hours in Beslan" and return to Beslan in their final chapter. Beslan School Number 1, an old schoolhouse built in 1899, was seized by Chechen rebels on September 1, 2004. The bloody siege ended with hundreds killed. While these chapters bookend Kremlin Rising, the lies, denials, and scapegoating evidenced in Beslan are repeated over and over again in the new Russia under President Putin. Putin places his former KGB cronies in key leadership positions inside and outside of government. Television and communications channels return to central authority. After 8 decades without jury trials, juries are reintroduced, but bribes and preordained outcomes continue to be the rule. Similarly, the outcomes of democratic elections are known well in advance, even when the competition refuses to disappear willingly. Oligarchs have their day, but those who don't play ball find their assets seized and their asses in jail. When Baker and Glasser talk with ordinary Russians they learn that many prize "stability" over Western concepts like democracy. In the epilogue, students in a history class discuss concepts like totalitarianism and democracy and Joe Stalin wins a mock election! History teacher Irina Suvolokina states about her students words that could apply to all of Russia, "They are not ready for democracy." One wonders whether they ever will be. If anyone questions whether Vladimir Putin would try to interfere with U.S. and other foreign elections, this should book should help dispel such doubts. Maybe you can take the man out of the KGB, but you can't take the KGB out of the man.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, the information is dated, as this book was completed around 2007, I believe, but it does give you an idea of who Vladimir Putin is (a little--his background is still a mystery, since he served as an undercover KGB officer for many years) and how he obtained power. As someone born in the early 1990s, I did not understand Russian politics and the transfer of power to Vladimir Putin, as it occurred when I was still very young. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that the KGB still has a lot of control in the Russian Government. The widespread corruption and oligarchs in power are actually still relevant today. I think Peskov (his adviser) actually recently stepped down due to the current Ukraine-Russia War, and he is mentioned several times in this book. Many other oligarchs in power mentioned in the book are still in power today, as well. The scariest part (at least to me) was seeing similarities between Russia in the early 2000s and the U.S. today. We are very close to being in the same position as the Russians, in my opinion. Overall, an excellent read if you want to better understand the Russian Government and what we are currently seeing play out on the world stage.

[Laura B · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive look at Russia’s development from a post-soviet era of a fumbling democracy to the era of Putin. The authors laid out the history in a more or less chronological fashion, broken down into key events or cultural shifts which were pretty enlightening.

The authors clearly wanted readers to understand how corrupt Russia is- to the point I kept thinking, I get it. The handling of the Beslan and theatre attack, where they bungled rescue operations costing even more innocent lives, the takeover of news outlets, and the consolidation of political power during election cycles, it’s clear that there are people in society that yearn for power and others just willing to accept authoritarian governing. I think it’s hard for Americans (or any citizens of democracy) to understand Soviet mentality and why some just come to settle for what simply is, rather than fight for something they’ve never had.

[GreyAtlas · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I would like to correct page 40: Putin is NOT 5'9. He is 5'7!!!! Also, he is NOT rail thin, he has a beer belly!!!

This book was okay. I wasn't too keen on it focusing more on terrorism within Russia. It heavily covered Beslan and Chechnya. I did like how it showed insight into Putin's personality, however I'm not sure how much I can trust the authors considering they have the idiocy to think that Putin is 5'9 when he clearly isn't. This book had potential to be something great, yet I found it just fell short. I enjoyed reading it, but I wasn't not hooked. The information was moderately organized, however I wasn't too keen on its tendency to focus on personal stories of ordinary Russian citizens. Regardless, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Russia, as found it was a helpful tool to see how the Kremlin handles crisis situations.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

From all categories- politics, economics, architecture, media, etc. Baker and Glasser provide the reader with a complex picture of Russia under Putin as compared to previous leaders. The level of corruption and lack of independent media is shocking. The invasion of Chechnya and the plight of these people over the last two hundred years is simply astounding. The information is so detailed yet the authors' write each chapter with a succinct topic and point that the reading is very engaging albeit my emotions range for infuriating, shocked, disgusted to simply sadden by the subject matter. It is simply stunning of the means and the speed in which Putin arose to power. Good, compelling read!