The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin

by David Satter

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 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 sucessor, 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.

Genres: Russia, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Russian History, True Crime, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published May 24, 2016

About the author

David Satter is senior fellow, Hudson Institute, and fellow, Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He was Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times from 1976 to 1982, then a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal.

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

As Satter points out, the purpose of this book was to try to relate the true story of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin (until 2014-2015). It may sound ambitious but I think the author did a pretty good job, especially when it comes to a book under 300 pages.

The critical point of this story - story of post-communist Russia - is the apartment bombings in the cities of Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk that took place in 1999. They accompanied Putin’s rise to power and contributed to the current regime in Russia.
Four apartment buildings were being blown up with hundreds of victims. The Moscow explosions took place at dawn, around 5 AM. The fact that most of the residents were at home asleep at that early hour increased the final death toll. Following the explosions, Muscovites were gripped by terror. Some were afraid even to spend nights in their apartments.

The author regards the apartment bombings as the result of an act of terror carried out by the Russian government against its own citizens. It must be added that he is not alone in his assertion, and this explanation is based on evidence. The authorities blamed those events on Chechens. However, according to Satter, this version does not stand up to close scrutiny.
Some of those who were making similar accusations were murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. Among them were Sergei Yushenkov, Anna Politkovskaya, and Alexander Litvinenko.

"In fact, the apartment bombings are impossible for a conscientious observer to ignore. The circumstantial evidence that the bombings were carried out by the FSB is overwhelming. The only reason there is no direct evidence is that the Putin regime has concealed it. The rubble from the bombings was cleared almost immediately, despite the objections of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The haste with which the crime scenes were destroyed is all the more striking when one considers that after U.S. embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, suspects were identified and eventually arrested as a result of the careful sifting of the rubble from the explosion, a process that went on for months."

As the author notes, "eight years of post-Soviet Russian history was telescoped into the shocking images of bodies being carried out of the rubble of bombed buildings."
President Yeltsin, whose second term in office was coming to an end, needed to choose a 'right' successor who would guarantee safety from prosecution for him and his family. A successor was also to guarantee that the criminal division of property (privatization which resembled a massive theft) in the country would not be subject to reevaluation. Putin who would soon become the next president met the criteria.
Сonveniently, he also answered the country’s desire for revenge.
The apartment bombings were used to justify the second Chechen war. Preparations for this assault were already under way.

The book goes on to address the Nord-Ost theater siege (2002) and the seizure of a school in Beslan (the city in North Ossetia in Russia) on September 1, 2004.
The reasons why those tragic events became possible remain unclear. Some evidence may indicate provocation. In any case, they reveal the disregard for human life which characterizes the Putin regime.

David Satter provides the context of what happened in post-communist Russia. Understanding the context in which policy decisions are made is highly important.
All in all, the main points the author makes can be summarized quite simply: the authorities in Russia are capable of almost anything.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Rounded up

A useful if quick overview of the past 23 years of Russian history by a former Financial Times journalist who has written a number of more in-depth books on the subject: this seems to be a maxi-sized-Very Short Introduction to his work, in other words.

And while I would normally never go to a fellow from the Hudson Institute for anything resembling "fair and balanced" reporting, Satter seems to be an honourable individual and an honest broker here, and his bird's-eye-view accounting of the atrocities that first cemented and then later maintained Putin's hold on power (the 1999 apartment bombings, the subsequent second war in Chechnya, and "the hostage siege at the Theater on Dubrovka in Moscow in October 2002 and the siege at a school in Beslan in September 2004") make for compelling, if enervating and enraging reading. (This book provides plenty of well-documented circumstantial evidence that Putin and his cronies were responsible for every one of those atrocities.)

In fact, having finished this brief yet detailed meticulously footnoted book (citations take up 20 of the 200 or so pages), the very idea that anyone in working professionally in politics, foreign service or international relations in the west had seen the regime as anything other than a murderous kleptocracy willing to sacrifice anyone, including its own people, in order to maintain its "vertical of power" is simply unbelievable. Who, in the west, looked the other way, and why?

Written in 2016, the book leaves us with this warning.

Russia faces a darkening future. The war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending, and in the wake of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the conditions have been created for mass internal repression. By threatening to use nuclear weapons against countries that are not Russia’s enemies, the leadership has also increased the chance that they might actually be used, either through miscalculation or in a confrontation inspired by Russia’s own actions.

He follows that premonitory with a paean to the Russian people, who somehow overthrew "Communism" decades earlier, but from this vantage point, in March, 2022, seem unlikely to stage a repeat performance.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succinct, serious, and informative, with a title as good as that of Peter Pomerantsev's Russia book. Satter links and explains Yeltsin and the 1999 apartment bombings, the 2002 Moscow theater siege, the 2004 Beslan school siege, and the rise of Putin. Lots of names that I will not remember, but the analysis adds to my understanding of the corruption and insidious threat of Putin's regime.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is there any doubt that Putin was going to take Ukraine at some point? From Putin’s 1st inaugural address in 2000. Probably should believe what people say:

On foreign policy, Putin said it was important to defend Russian citizens both in Russia and “beyond its boundaries.” These words were little noticed at the time, and Russia was still too weak to contemplate foreign aggression, but they were a claim for the future.

Up to 2013, Russian politicians tried to keep a pretense of openness and liberalism to the rest of the world. The Ukrainian crisis at the end of 2013 changes everything. Satter is trying to get to Moscow. I’m now looking at the news coverage of the Russian invasion and general coverage of Russia with a new filter—don’t think they are just like us in the West.
Russia's ability to manipulate foreign opinion, however, is limited by external circumstances. In December 2013, as I was waiting for my Russian visa to be renewed, the crisis in Ukraine was changing the calculus. The mask of liberalism had effectively misled the world about the true nature of the regime, but if the regime began to be directly threatened, as it was by events in Ukraine, it would have to take steps that would make the illusion harder, or impossible, to sustain.

I owed my continued presence in Moscow to the regime’s desire to protect the masquerade. Russian officials liked to point out that no American journalist had been expelled since the end of the Cold War. With the Ukraine crisis, however, the authorities apparently decided that the show was over. My presence in Moscow was a luxury they could no longer afford.

Understanding Russia is actually very easy, but one must teach oneself to do something that is very hard—to believe the unbelievable. Westerners become confused because they approach Russia with a Western frame of reference, not realizing that Russia is a universe based on a completely different set of values. If a Westerner takes it for granted that the individual has inherent worth and is not just raw material for the deluded schemes of corrupt political leaders, he may not realize that in Russia this outlook is not widely shared, To grasp the reality of Russia, it is necessary to accept that Russian leaders really are capable of blowing up hundreds of their own people to preserve their hold on power. They really are capable of ordering an attack with flamethrowers on a gymnasium full of defenseless parents and children. Once one accepts that the impossible is really possible, the degradation of the Yeltsin years and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power make perfect sense.

This book will give you a whole new view on some key events. The 1999 apartment bombing is one. It is highly likely this was a false flag op. Satter recounts a meeting with two men who have knowledge of the “investigation” of the bombings:
The men said they were meeting me out of respect for my friend. They said there was indeed something strange about the apartment bombings.

As the two spoke, I took no notes, relying on my memory. We gave the impression of three men having a talk. Nonetheless, I glanced around continuously for the appearance of an interested onlooker. The two men elaborated on the information given by my friend. They said that the idea that the bombings were carried out by Chechen terrorists did not make sense. All four bombings had the same “handwriting,” attested by the nature of the destruction, the way the buildings’ concrete panels collapsed, and the volume of the blasts. The explosive in each case was said to be hexogen, and all four bombs were timed to go off at night to assure the maximum number of casualties.

To have carried out such a campaign, Chechen terrorists would have needed a major logistical operation. They would have had to prepare nine explosions (four that took place and five that the Russian authorities claimed to have prevented) in widely distant cities in the space of two weeks. This would have had to be done, moreover, while the Chechen Islamists, the preferred suspects, were engaging Russian forces in Dagestan and the official Chechen government was bracing for a Russian invasion. Under these circumstances, the Chechens could not have gained access to tons of hexogen from a factory in the Perm oblast that was tightly guarded by the central FSB.

It was highly likely the bombings were not the work of the Chechens, especially since one of the bombings was accidentally announced by a Putin-friendly Duma member 3 days before it actually happened.
Shortly after the independent commission began its work, however, an incident occurred that reminded Russians of just how mysterious the apartment bombings were. In March, the newspaper Noviye Izvestiya announced the result of its investigation into the fact that Gennady Seleznev, the speaker of the Duma and a close associate of Putin, had announced the bombing in Volgodonsk on September 13, three days before it occurred.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party had informed journalists of what Seleznev had said about an explosion in Volgodonsk immediately after he said it. But they could not confirm his remark, so it was not reported. On September 16, however, the building in Volgodonsk really was blown up, and on the 17th, Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation.

“Do you see what is happening in this country?” he said, shouting and gesticulating. “You say an apartment building has blown up on Monday and it explodes on Thursday. This can be evaluated as a provocation.” Seleznev avoided responding, and when Zhirinovsky persisted, his microphone was turned off.

Now the newspaper succeeded in getting the transcript of what Seleznev had said on the 13th. His precise words were: “Here is a communication which they transmit. According to a report from Rostov-on-Don today, this past night, an apartment house was blown up in the city of Volgodonsk.” The newspaper asked Seleznev who had told him about the Volgodonsk bombing three days before it happened. He answered, “Believe me, not Berezovsky,” thus indicating that he was well aware who had given him the information.

Seleznev then told the newspaper that he had actually been referring to an explosion on September 15 that was organized by criminal gangs and did not claim any victims. This explosion was confirmed by the local Volgodonsk press, but Seleznev’s explanation raised more questions…

I feel the West failed the Russians after the fall of the USSR to some degree. I know we tried to help but the leadership did not really have a clue how to transition to a capitalistic economy. Everyone was happy the Cold War was over, the West won, money was taken from the defense budgets and spent on social projects. Eastern Europe was freed from the soviet yoke and looked to the West for help and inclusion in their markets. Everything was great except in Russia.
Many things changed after the fall of the Soviet Union. But as society was rapidly transformed, it became obvious that there had been no moral revolution in Russia. Communist society had taken it for granted that the individual was expendable; postcommunist Russia did as well, often to an even greater degree. Yeltsin was a hero to many Russians after he successfully led the resistance to the August 1991 pro-communist coup. But neither Yeltsin nor the “young reformers” whom he put in charge of Russia's transformation showed any understanding of the need to establish the rule of law and the habits of respect for the individual. For Yeltsin and the reformers, the goal was to reach a “point of no return,” beyond which it would be impossible to restore socialism regardless of the will of the people. Property had to be put into private hands as quickly as possible, and this was done with little regard for who received the property or on what basis. Capitalism was created. But by carrying out the largest peaceful transfer of property in history without the benefit of law, the reformers created the conditions for the criminalization of the whole country,

The period of Yeltsin was bad.
The pillaging of the country led to economic collapse. In the period 1992-98, Russia's gross domestic product fell by half. (During the Great Depression, the American economy shrank by 30.5 percent.) The collapse of industrial production was even greater, declining 56 percent between 1992 and 1998—a worse fall than under German occupation during World War II.” Russia became a classic third world country, selling raw materials to import consumer goods. People went months and even years without being paid. Millions were forced to spend weekends in the countryside, growing their own food in order to survive.

The economic disaster was accompanied by a demographic catastrophe. Between 1990 and 1994, male life expectancy fell by more than six years.” By 1998 it was fifty-seven years, the lowest in the industrial world. The almost vertical rise in the death rate was nearly unprecedented for a country that was not at war, and at first, Western demographers did not believe the figures. During the 1990s, the Russian population fell by 750,000 a year.

This book will open your eyes to events in recent history and make you wonder why we haven’t paid close attention. The last fair election was 1990 in Russia when Yeltsin was elected. No government since then has been legitimately elected. The Chechen wars, Ukraine, Crimea, Beslan, the Moscow theater hostage event are all discussed and he gives you a new perspective. Criminals rule. For example:
Ownership of the apartment where you lived became a valuable asset as Yeltsin and his government try to get as much property and industry out of the state’s hands—jumpstart capitalism—prevent socialism from regaining power. There was a dark downside. Satter takes a walk one evening and reads a bulletin board.
One of the handwritten announcements read: “Are you ill and alone? We are ready to help.” It proposed lifetime care for single persons in difficulty in return for legal ownership of their apartment. The note did not include the name or address of an organization, only a phone number. It included a promise to handle legal formalities and said that many people in the area were already being helped.

I stood for a long time in the biting wind, studying the announcement. With the fall of communism, state apartments could now be privatized and become the property of their occupant. The area was full of people who lived alone. This was the first time I was exposed to the apartment racket, but I felt intuitively that anyone who agreed to this arrangement was signing his death warrant. I soon learned that my suspicions were not unfounded. The bodies of those who agreed were discovered by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, in forests and garbage dumps all over Russia.

Excellent book, 4 Stars

[Moritz Mueller-Freitag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power famously coincided with a string of deadly apartment bombings in September 1999. The four bombings happened in three cities, including Moscow, killing more than 300 people and injuring about 1,000. The Kremlin blamed the attacks on Chechen rebels, using the claim as a pretext for a second bloody war against the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Putin, who had recently been appointed Prime Minister, was put in charge of the war and achieved overnight popularity as a “defender of the nation.” Aided by blanket TV coverage, his approval ratings soared from just 2% in August to over 50% by the end of December. When Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on New Year’s Eve, Putin was elevated into the Presidency and quickly began consolidating his power.

The mystery of who was behind the 1999 apartment bombings has never been solved. But almost from the start, there were doubts about the provenance of the bombings. The Chechens denied responsibility and no proof of their involvement was ever established. Instead, there was a smoking gun that pointed to the Russian authorities as perpetrators of the attacks: on September 22, a fifth, unexploded bomb was discovered in a building in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow. When the police apprehended the suspects, they turned out to be not Chechen terrorists but employees of the FSB (the main successor agency of the KGB). The plot thickened when the bomb tested positive for hexogen, a military explosive that only the FSB could have had access to. The explosive in the four previous bombings was said to be hexagon as well.

Another red flag was raised over the motives for the blasts. While the Chechens had little to gain from blowing up innocent civilians, it clearly served the interests of President Yeltsin and his entourage. On the eve of the apartment bombings, his government had become embroiled in a wave of corruption scandals and lived in fear of a cruel reckoning. It was widely expected that Yeltsin would lose the upcoming election and face some type of criminal prosecution for his pillaging of the country. He was therefore desperately seeking a successor from among the security services who could protect him and his “Family.” After some twists and turns, the choice fell on Putin. But for “Operation Successor” to succeed, it was necessary to have a massive provocation to boost Putin’s public image and demonstrate his capacity for strong leadership. The apartment bombings fit that bill perfectly.

Ever since Putin came to power, the Kremlin has stonewalled all efforts to investigate who was behind these acts of terror. The bombings are a taboo subject in Russia, and everyone who has investigated the incident has been either murdered or imprisoned. This includes the politician Sergei Yushenkov (shot in 2003), the investigative journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin (poisoned in 2003), the human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya (shot in 2006), former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko (poisoned in 2006), and former FSB colonel Mikhail Trepashkin (sentenced to four years in a labor camp).

One of the few public voices who has escaped this fate (though he was later expelled from Russia) is the veteran journalist David Satter. He is the author of several brilliant books on the Soviet Union and Russia, including the deeply troubling The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep. The circumstantial evidence he provides in this book—based on many years of research and meticulous sourcing—makes an overwhelming case that the Russian authorities were complicit in the 1999 apartment bombings. The same goes for the regime’s botched responses to the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis (at least 170 dead) and the 2004 Beslan school siege (at least 385 dead). Satter writes:

“The greatest barrier to accepting the evidence that points to the FSB as the perpetrator of the bombings is not that it is unconvincing but that it is so difficult to believe such a thing possible. By any standard, murdering hundreds of randomly chosen civilians in order to hold on to power shows a cynicism that cannot be comprehended in a normal human context. But it is fully consistent with the kind of country that Russia, in the wake of communism, has become.”

Satter makes it clear that Putin, like any authoritarian leader, thrives on crisis and is fluent in the politics of fear. His regime has perfected the method traditionally used by tsarists and the communists to distract the Russian population from their rulers’ abuses: create terror and political violence, then blame it on a foreign adversary to fight back and tighten the screws. After all, this is what Stalin did to launch his bloody purges of the 1930s. The most dramatic examples in the Putin era are the second war against Chechnya (1999), the annexation of Crimea (2014), and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2022). As incredible as it may seem, Putin really is the kind of man who will stop at nothing to stay in power, even if that means terror against his own people.

“Understanding Russia is actually very easy, but one must teach oneself to do something that is very hard—to believe the unbelievable. Westerners become confused because they approach Russia with a Western frame of reference, not realizing that Russia is a universe based on a completely different set of values. If a Westerner takes it for granted that the individual has inherent worth and is not just raw material for the deluded schemes of corrupt political leaders, he may not realize that in Russia this outlook is not widely shared. To grasp the reality of Russia, it is necessary to accept that Russian leaders really are capable of blowing up hundreds of their own people to preserve their hold on power. They really are capable of ordering an attack with flamethrowers on a gymnasium full of defenseless parents and children. Once one accepts that the impossible is really possible, the degradation of the Yeltsin years and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power make perfect sense.”

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satterova kniha nás v rýchlosti prevedie chaosom a kriminalitou Jeľcinových rokov, skorumpovaných privatizácií, budovania autoritárskej „vertikály moci“ za Putina, selektívnom terore štátnych úradov, ako aj obludnou neúctou k ľudským životom obyčajných ľudí pri „riešení“ teroristických útokov v Beslane a v Divadle na Dubrovke.

Ukazuje nám Rusko ako krajinu, kde je ľudský život len surovinou politických kšeftov, krajinu, kde si režim udržiava vlastnú existenciu krvavými provokáciami, vojenskými intervenciami, lžami a lúpežami.

Kniha je svojím rozsahom a záberom ideálna pre kohokoľvek, kto dnes ešte stále trpí ilúziami o povahe ruského režimu a živote v tejto desivej krajine. Je to v podstate novinový článok so všetkými plusmi a mínusmi z toho vyplývajúcimi. Je to reportáž o režime zmaru a mravnej dezintegrácie pre tých, čo nedávali pozor. Je príhodným začiatkom nevyhnutnej konverzácie, ktorú musíme absolvovať, aby sme pochopili, aké hrozby z východu plynú aj nám.

Autorovi stačí 170 strán na to, aby sa vám už určite ľahko nespalo.

Zvyšok: SME Fórum, 11.2.2017 alebo tu: https://komentare.sme.sk/c/20451951/s...

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

To understand modern day Russia one has to go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 'privatization' (read 'theft') of Russia's resources and industries by Yeltsin and his cronies. To avoid being held accountable for their grand larceny he orchestrated the election of Putin who has since furthered the process of turning Russia into a criminal oligarchy and has used terror, murder, corruption and war (including Crimea and Ukraine) to bolster his position and subdue opposition. David Satter, who clearly knows what he is talking about, spells it out all very plainly. This is as current as today's newspaper and is well worth reading.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast paced relation of Russian history following the fall of Communism.
Timeline of Events
• 25th of December 1991 – Gorbatchev resigns
• 26th of December 1991 - the end of the Soviet Union
• 2nd of January 1992 – Yegor Gaidar frees prices. In 10 months they rose by factor of 25 to 30.
• October 1992 – privatization starts with distribution of vouchers.
• 21st of September 1993 – Yeltsin issued decree number 1400, abolishing the Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet voted Alexander Rutskoi president.
• 3rd of October 1993 - The defenders of the Supreme Soviet (White House) left for Ostankino Tower to take over TV station. Inside there were 500 police, who opened fire killing 46 demonstrators.
• 4th of October 1993 – the army storms the White House. Further 338 people were killed. Some reports claimed between 1,500 and 2,783 instead.
• 1st of January 1994 – Start of the first Chechen war with Russian tanks attacking Grozny in Chechnya.
• July 1996 – Yeltsin begins his second term as president.
• In the period of 1992 – 98 Russia’s GDP fell by half. During the Great Depression the American economy shrank by 30.5%.
• 5th of August 1999 a Chechen Islamist force invades Dagestan.
• 9th of August 1999 – Putin named prime minister.
• 4th of September 1999 – a truck bomb in Buinaksk in Dagestan destroyed five-story apartment building and killed 64 people.
• 9th of September 1999 – a bomb exploded in the basement of an apartment building in Moscow, killing 100 people.
• 13 September 1999 – an explosion in Moscow flattened a nine-story apartment building in Kashirskoye Highway and killed 124 people.
• 16th of September 1999 – a truck bomb exploded in Volgodonsk, killing 18 people.
• 22nd of September 1999 – an attempt to set a bomb in the basement of the building in Ryazan was discovered and police called. The bomb got disarmed and suspects arrested only to discover that they worked for the FSB (Federal Security Service). The FSB announced that evacuation was a part of a training exercise. The explosive material was hexogen.
• September 1999 – Chechnya invaded again.
• 31st December 1999 – Yeltsin resigns as president and Putin appointed acting president. His first act is to issue a decree granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.
• 19th February 2000 – Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of St. Petersburg and Putin’s chief there, has suffered a heart attack while travelling to Kaliningrad. It was later found that his two assistants, who accompanied him on the trip had been treated for mild poisoning following Sobchak’s death.
• 26th of March 2000 – Putin elected president.
• 16th of July 2000 – an owner of NTV, Vladimir Gusinsky was charged with fraud, offered a sale of his TV station and allowed to leave Russia to avoid jail. No further programs about apartment building bombings appeared.
• December 2000 – Boris Berezovsky, an owner of ORT TV, who criticized Putin in the aftermath of Kursk catastrophe, is told by Putin to give up his station or by jailed. He leaves Russia. His friend and collaborator Nikolai Glushkov is arrested. Berezovski sells his share of the station.
• February 2002 – a motion to investigate the Ryazan events failed in the State Duma for the third time. A group of deputies organized an independent commission to seek answer. It was chaired by Sergei Kovalyev.
• March 2002 – The newspaper “Noviye Izvestiya” announced that Gennady Seleznev, the speaker of Duma and close associate of Putin, had announced the bombing in Volgodonsk on 13th of September, three days before it occurred.
• 23rd October 2002 – Hostage siege at the Theater on Dubrovka in Moscow during a performance of Nord-Ost, the most popular musical in Russia. Authorities used a poison gas and stormed the building. 129 hostages and all forty terrorists were killed.
• 17th April 2003 – Sergei Yushenkov, who investigated the apartment bombing, is shot in front of his apartment building.
• July 2003 – Yuri Shchekochikihin, a Duma deputy who investigated the apartment bombings dies of unexplained illness, with symptoms of polonium poisoning.
• 25th October 2003 – Mikhail Khodorovski, the head of Yukos oil company and Russia’s wealthiest man, is arrested and accused of fraud and tax evasion. He is sentenced to eight years in labour camp. Near the end of his prison term he charged again to be sentenced to further 6 and half years.
• 9th July 2004 – Paul Klebnikov, the American and editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, who was investigating the distribution of property in Moscow is gunned down on the street.
• 1st September 2004 – Siege at a school in Beslan. The authorities attacked with flame throwers, tanks and grenades. 318 hostages were killed. 32 terrorists were killed while an unknown number managed to escape.
• 7th October 2006 – Anna Politovskaya shot in her apartment building after stepping out of the elevator.
• 23rd November 2006 – FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko dies in London hospital poisoned with Polonium applied by Andrei Jugovoi, the owner of security company in Moscow and his associate Dmitri Kovtun.
• 2nd March 2008 – Medviediev elected president and replacing Putin.
• 15th July 2009 – Natalia Estemirova, who worked with Politovskaya is abducted on the street in Grozny, driven to a wooded area in Ingushetia and shot.
• 26th May 2012 – Putin elected president and nominates Medvedev as prime minister.

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satter investigated the apartment bombings that catapulted Putin to power in Russia and unlike others who also investigated this crime, lived to tell about it. This book recaps a tiny bit of that investigation. Its primary focus was describing the absolute corruption that took place when Yeltsin and Putin tried to "fix" Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

While reading the news about Trump and his associate's ties to Russia, I always want to know more about how Putin rose to power and how close his ties to the Russian Oligarchs are. This book does a great job of addressing these questions. I have read several books on Putin's rise to power that mention how the Oligarchs came to be in control of the country, but this book unquestionably does the best job explaining how the fall of the Soviet Union put the bulk of government resources in the private hands of a very few powerful men. No wonder Trump admires them so and is a wanna-be oligarch. The way Yeltsin went about converting Communist Russia to "Capitalist" Russia (quotes because in no way is it a capitalist system) ensured disastrous results.

As an example, in order to privatize property and businesses, that had all been owned by the government under the communist regime, Yeltsin released vouchers to everyone (to anyone really). These vouchers allowed people to buy shares in companies. The problem was, there were absolutely zero protections put in place to stave off corrupt practices of obtaining vouchers. There were no education programs aimed at helping citizens understand how the vouches could help them own stock in companies. Adding to that, there were many corrupt practices in place that ensured people could not attend public actions to buy vouchers. People were hired by companies to dress up as homeless people who would offer to buy vouchers for $10 or trade them for a bottle of $7 vodka. This gave the impression that the vouchers were worth very little. In reality, they bought a very few percent of the population an entire country's worth of resources.

I highly recommend this book on Russia's most recent history. It is filled with intrigue, murder, and shockingly corrupt politicians. I would suggest you follow it with Red Notice by Bill Browder, who was heavily involved in the fight to buy up vouchers and provides a more personal account of what is described by Satter in this book.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, riveting, well-sourced (if somewhat conspiracy minded) account of the corruption and utter moral depravity of the Yeltsin and Putin years, and the road to dictatorship in Russa.

Cp. http://www.politico.com/magazine/stor...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/...

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladim...

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Succinct and terrifying look into the inner workings of the Putin and Yeltsin regimes. Ukraine, the elections, and Putin himself make a lot more sense after reading this book.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author takes a look inside the dark and twisted world of Putin's Russia, and makes a strong argument that some of the recent "terrorist" attacks there were actually orchestrated by the Russian government at Putin's behest. The only thing I didn't like about the book was that some of the relevancy is stale, like the chapter about Ukraine. The author highlights the annexation of Crimea, but the book doesn't include anything about the current ongoing war. Other than that, an excellent book.

[Heather Reads Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is aptly named. A crash course history on Russia's post-Soviet era, much of it containing assertions so shocking to the Western conscience that I found myself often checking end notes and following up with Google searches so I could find the source material. But they were sound, and David Satter himself is no slouch – with four decades as a Russian correspondent, he conducted some of the most hair-raising research firsthand. And I've seen glimmers of the thesis he puts forth in my own research, but he puts it all together and lays it out in a straightforward, deeply disturbing sequence of events.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the allegations put forth by Satter is that some of them, particularly the terrorist attacks as provocations or at the very least sanctioned by the government, are impossible to definitively prove. As such, they come across as conspiracy-minded, as other reviewers have noted. However, considering there are no official reports with evidence presented by the Russian government, circumstantial evidence, as Satter himself states, is all one has to go by. Satter's tone, although sober, is never inflammatory, and he provides examples and cited sources. This puts even the most unlikely scenarios firmly in the realm of possible, if not probable. The Russian state has long made a practice of obfuscating truth to keep a hold on power, and one only has to turn on the news in 2017 to see how Putin has exported these same tactics.

Anyone who wants to know what's going on in present day Russia – and how it might relate to the current American predicament – should give this a read... and prepare yourself for some sleepless nights.

[F · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and chilling read. The page which most impressed me, as I had not heard these details before, was Page 157: "Among the false reports intended to stoke nationalist hysteria were the story of a three-year-old boy who was allegedly tortured and crucified by the Ukrainian military in Slaviansk, a report on the raising of the levels of the Lopan and Kharkov rivers so that NATO submarines could reach Donetsk, a report on the cancellation of the May 9 World War II commemoration in Kiev and its replacement by a gay pride parade, a report that the Ukrainians had stopped selling bread to Russian speakers, and a report that Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President, was preparing to make Hitler's birthday a national holiday." I could not decide whether to laugh out loud or weep that alternative facts and people gullible enough to believe them are alive and well all over the world.

[Felipe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A terse, already outdated recitation of facts that suffers from all the flaws of book-length works authored by journalists. There are careless errors--Otto Pohl, not Paul Otto--that call into question both the Satter's authority and the editors' diligence. Surprised that this was published by Yale U Press.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful and discouraging in my understanding the mind and methods of Putin. Lest there be any doubt, he is not like any Western leader. More like a Mexican drug lord as described in the writing of Don Winslow. David Satter reiterates that he places no value on human lives other than his own and his cronies. If you wonder about Putin, read this one.

[Inês · Rating 4 out of 5]

» No nosso país, infelizmente [..] a pessoa comum é enganada por todos [..]. Não ultrapassámos as nossas hesitações quanto à defesa dos nossos direitos e à sua realização em geral. Nunca houve um respeito pela lei na sociedade russa e ainda hoje continua a não existir.»

[Lindsey Leitera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, a short and concise history of post-Soviet Russia. I hoped this book would provide necessary context given the current War in Ukraine, and it surpassed my expectations.

[David Kapusta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knižka ktorú dám istotne prečítať mojej starej mame. Tá mi pred nejakým časom povedala, že Putin je vlastne dobrý človek. Stala sa to potom ako jej niekto poslal na mail účelovo zostrihané video.

Satter faktograficky, rezko a jadrne opisuje najdesivejšie udalosti sprevádzajúce ruský politický život od Jeľcinovho obdobia až po vraždu Borisa Nemcova.

Americký korešpondent roky pôsobiaci v Sovietskom zväze a Rusku venuje veľkú pozornosť bombovým útokom na obytné domy v roku 1999, ktoré sa stali Putinovým expresným výťahom na najvyššie mocenské priečky. Autor servíruje pochybnosti v súvislosti s doposiaľ nevyšetrením prípadom a načrtáva verziu, že za smrťou mnohých nevinných obetí stojí ruská tajná služba. Satter túži po pravde a pripomína tým čo zabudli na nevinné obete v moskovskom divadle v 2002 a v škole v Beslane. Pripomína otravu Alexandra Litvinenka rádioaktívnym polóniom, vraždu Anny Politkovskej, Sergeja Juščenka, Borisa Nemcova a ďaľších. Knižka je pútavé reportérske čítanie, ktoré vás vtiahne do morálneho marasu postkomunistického Ruska a pripomenie, že porozpadávané kúsky ríše zla zarástli leskom hospodárskeho rastu ale naďalej ostali imanentnou súčasťou centralizovaných mocných štruktúr Kremľa.

[Mirek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Veľmi depresívna kniha o najtemnejších kapitolách Putinovej éry. David Satter píše o zločinoch, ktoré pomohli Putinovi k moci, alebo ju ešte neskôr upevnili. Dôkazy, ako aj vinníci nie sú, a tí čo ich hľadali, boli zavraždení. V blízkej dobe sa zrejme nenájde ochota ich vyriešiť, tak ako dodnes nebola ochota ponoriť sa do sovietskych zločinov komunizmu, toho nostalgického režimu. Satter za najdôležitejšie považuje objasniť bombové útoky na obytné domy v roku 1999, ktorými sa podľa neho tá temná cesta začala a po ktorých sa naplno rozbehla kampaň pre vojnu v Čečensku. Môže byť pravdivé, niečo tak desivé?

[Ярослава · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Менше знаєш, краще спиш” невловно нагадує традиційний детектив з клаустрофобно вузьким колом підозрюваних, де вбивство відбувається у відрізаному від зовнішнього світу будинку. Отже, книжка починається з низки вибухів, які потрясли Росію у вересні 1999 році.

Далі мій відгук на ЛітАкценті.

[Thomas Ray]

The title calls to mind the Steve Martin newspaper scene in Roxanne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMXy...

[Charlie Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book - edifying & interesting.

I have a much better understanding of the Yeltsin era, how Putin came to power, and the terror inflicted on both those within and outside of Russian borders in order for him to hold onto it.

[Alex Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Current events inspired me to pick up this book, essentially a short treatise on Russian history from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the present. The crash course in (US-backed) neoliberal shock therapy was a corrupt disaster from which Russia's nascent experiment in liberal democracy never recovered: well-connected apparatchiks snatched up some of Russia's most valuable state-owned assets for bargain-basement prices while solidifying their hold over Russian politics. Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, were left to fend for themselves. They saw their savings disappear with the onset of Weimar-style hyperinflation and, naïve to the ways of capitalism, fell victim to get-rich-quick investment schemes. Russian living standards plummeted: male life expectancy declined by an astounding ten years while GDP was cut in half, virtually unprecedented reverses for a peacetime country.

Boris Yeltsin, the hero of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, cast aside his democratic credentials and ruthlessly consolidated power, using military force to win a showdown with the Russian parliament in 1993 and later disbanding it. The 1998 financial crisis threatened this house of cards: Yeltsin was now a despised lame duck and a new regime could threaten the oligarchs' control over the economy. Then came the September 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which sparked the Second Chechen War and thrust a comparatively unknown security official named Vladimir Putin into the spotlight. Satter argues that the bombings were actually a false flag operation by Russian intelligence: the fortuitous timing and sophistication of the attacks, the suspicious connections between Chechen terrorists and Russian oligarchs, and targets that maximized both civilian causalities and public outrage; the signs pointed in that direction. Yeltsin soon handed over the presidency to Putin in exchange for a pardon granting him blanket immunity from prosecution.

Buoyed by rising energy prices and the consequent rebound in the Russian economy, Putin accelerated Russia's slide to autocracy while seeking to revive Russia's national pride and place in the world. We can now see the culmination of Putin's imperial mission in the battlefields of Ukraine. From Yeltsin standing on a tank fighting off the last gasps of a dying empire to his chosen heir brutally trying to reconstitute it, life indeed comes full circle sometimes.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really know too much about the apartment bombings or the gassing of hostages or any of the other controversial topics going into this. If these events were conspiracies by the Russian government, or "provocations", it wouldn't really surprise me. In fact, the idea that we need to "believe the unbelievable" in order to understand Russia is probably the most ridiculous thing about this book. Not only is there nothing unbelievable about governments harming their own citizens in order to advance their agendas but the implication that the U.S. and other western countries don't act the same way is equally naïve. Russian corruption might be more blatant but it's not that much different. He tries to make the case that this stuff happens in Russia because their communist roots make it hard for them to appreciate the value of individuals as much as the value of the state, which doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense considering that individual citizens everywhere are treated as expendable any time a privileged minority somewhere needs some cannon fodder. Russians who bend over backwards for their leaders aren't deluding themselves much more than citizens of any other country. People everywhere are in denial about what the real problems are and would rather just follow psychopaths who tell them that they can bring "normal" back than have to actually face the harsh realities of their unsustainable lifestyles. So while I do think this book is worth reading for anyone that wants to understand what's going on in Russia, some of this guy's ideas just drove me nuts.

[Gideon Kalischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fly-by history of the big event in modern Russian history, this book succeeds. Its well-written and reads very quickly. And for a short book it gives a good level of depth on the juicy events.

But this book is not an in-depth look at Russia as a society or its geopolitical strategy. I was hoping for a little more analysis of Putin's strategy and thinking. The author presents a simplified version of Putin - that he is only interested in consolidating power and getting rich. All of Putin's tactics are to distract from this main pursuit. I would like to hear more what other factors are driving his decisions, like nationalism, his own ego and his worldview in general. I would also like to learn more about how Russians grapple with their government's actions - again the author simplifies here. Putin starts wars, people love him for it - but that doesn't really explain the whole picture.

[Roger B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satter is part of the Hudson Institute, so the conclusions were as one would expect. Still, a good look at the problems of the post-communist regimes in Russia and the methods by which political stability is achieved. Satter sees small chances for a democratic Western-style government emerging. Have to agree that it does seem it will be Putin for life, however Satter does concede that most of the population does not seem to be affected by the machinations in Moscow. Furthermore, Satter saves his sharpest criticism for Russians themselves, suggesting they don't want to face the reality of the situation and citing their incomprehension at the need for Individualism. It's not clear if the Yeltsin years represent a memory of the Individualism that Satter demands. Perhaps hope is just a special kind of forgetting.

[Jorge Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este livro foi escrito em 2016, dois anos após a invasão e anexação da Crimeia pela Rússia, e faz um apanhado daquilo que foi a história da Rússia após a queda do comunismo. Dos anos de Ieltsin à ascensão de Putin e das formas como o regime matou, manipulou, roubou e desprezou o seu próprio povo.
A parte mais chocante é que, enquanto tudo isto acontecia, várias pessoas alertavam para a corrupção, para a violência e para a arbitrariedade do regime. O que é que o ocidente fez? Praticamente nada. A Alemanha até construiu um gasoduto que a liga directamente à Rússia!
Enfim, o título é apropriado, porque ter isto tudo tão explicadinho como aqui está é, de facto, coisa para não nos deixar dormir.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a basic introduction to the premise that the Russian Federation is a kleptocracy. It will give readers a good foundation to understanding Russian political and economic history since the fall of the USSR.

[Oliver Patrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vyborna kniha o vlade Jelcina, jeho konci a vzniku Putina, o suvislostiach a veciach pred cim sa moc v Rusku nezastavi a hlavne o tom, ze jednotlivec v Rusku neznamena nic ani v dnesnych casoch.