Le fantôme de Staline
Les passions et la fureur de l'histoire marquent les personnages de ce livre. Ils sont souvent inattendus, parfois déroutants, toujours démesurés. Un Staline insolite surgit comme un revenant d'une pièce de Shakespeare. Poutine agit tel un James Bond. Les tueurs à gages peaufinent leur talent d'empoisonneur. Les amours sont hors norme, absolus, rappelant l'esprit du célèbre roman de Pasternak, Le Docteur Jivago, dont on fête cette année le cinquantenaire de la parution. Ce livre annonce le lancement d'une nouvelle collection ayant pour ambition de jeter un " nouveau regard " sur nombre de vérités établies qui ne sont pas conformes à la réalité historique. Ceci concerne particulièrement l'histoire russe, notamment le personnage de Staline. Les archives étant désormais accessibles, il est possible aujourd'hui de dresser un portrait plus précis du tyran rouge. Il offre aussi, à la lumière d'une longue enquête, un nouveau regard sur les faces cachées de Poutine, personnage-clé de la Russie actuelle. Cette évocation est d'autant plus propice que l'actualité est marquée par le quatre-vingt-dixième anniversaire de la révolution bolchevique, sans oublier les élections législatives et présidentielles en Russie.
Ce livre renoue avec les précédents ouvrages d'évasion de Vladimir Fédorovski tels que le Roman de Saint-Pétersbourg car, à la base de documents inédits, l'auteur met en scène la vraie Lara du roman de Pasternak, antithèse lumineuse des personnages terribles du XXe siècle.
Ce livre renoue avec les précédents ouvrages d'évasion de Vladimir Fédorovski tels que le Roman de Saint-Pétersbourg car, à la base de documents inédits, l'auteur met en scène la vraie Lara du roman de Pasternak, antithèse lumineuse des personnages terribles du XXe siècle.
Putin Country
Short-listed for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize
From the award-winning author of Naked in Baghdad comes Anne Garrels's revealing look into the lives of ordinary Russians, Putin Country.
More than twenty years ago, the NPR correspondent Anne Garrels first visited Chelyabinsk, a gritty military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contained beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Garrels’s goal was to chart the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse by traveling to Russia’s heartland.
Returning again and again, Garrels found that the area’s new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Sushi restaurants proliferated; so did shakedowns. In the neighboring countryside, villages crumbled into the ground. Far from the glitz of Moscow, the people of Chelyabinsk were working out their country’s destiny, person by person.
In Putin Country, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists who champion the rights of orphans and disabled children, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a circle of determined Protestant evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers trying to cope with inescapable payoffs and institutionalized negligence. As Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and war in Ukraine leads to Western sanctions and a lower standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country’s direction. Through it all, Garrels sympathetically charts an ongoing identity crisis. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? What kind of pride and cohesion can it offer? Drawing on close friendships sustained over many years, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter.
Correcting the misconceptions of Putin’s supporters and critics alike, Garrels’s portrait of Russia’s silent majority is both essential and engaging reading at a time when cold war tensions are resurgent.
From the award-winning author of Naked in Baghdad comes Anne Garrels's revealing look into the lives of ordinary Russians, Putin Country.
More than twenty years ago, the NPR correspondent Anne Garrels first visited Chelyabinsk, a gritty military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contained beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Garrels’s goal was to chart the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse by traveling to Russia’s heartland.
Returning again and again, Garrels found that the area’s new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Sushi restaurants proliferated; so did shakedowns. In the neighboring countryside, villages crumbled into the ground. Far from the glitz of Moscow, the people of Chelyabinsk were working out their country’s destiny, person by person.
In Putin Country, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists who champion the rights of orphans and disabled children, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a circle of determined Protestant evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers trying to cope with inescapable payoffs and institutionalized negligence. As Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and war in Ukraine leads to Western sanctions and a lower standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country’s direction. Through it all, Garrels sympathetically charts an ongoing identity crisis. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? What kind of pride and cohesion can it offer? Drawing on close friendships sustained over many years, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter.
Correcting the misconceptions of Putin’s supporters and critics alike, Garrels’s portrait of Russia’s silent majority is both essential and engaging reading at a time when cold war tensions are resurgent.