Masha Karp

Saturday

Masha Karp

Siege mentality

From our UK edition

The mirrored sunglasses worn by Putin on the cover of Angus Roxburgh’s The Strongman give the Russian president the look of a crude mafia boss, while the half-face photo on the cover of Masha Gessen’s book makes him appear both more ordinary and more sinister. This hints at the difference of the authors’ approach. Gessen focuses on the trajectory of a postwar Soviet boy growing up in a shabby communal flat, fierce and vengeful in street fights, who dreams of joining the KGB. This dream was fulfilled: Putin got a boring job as an agent in East Germany, and ten years after returning home he surprisingly became the most powerful man in Russia — which, 12 years later, he remains. His years in the KGB taught him secrecy.

Saturday

Masha Karp

Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia by Luke Harding

From our UK edition

‘For you Russia is closed’. One can imagine the satisfaction with which a border control official pronounced these words to the Guardian correspondent, Luke Harding,  who had just flown back to Moscow after a visit to London last February. Harding, who had been covering Russia for nearly four years, became the first foreign journalist to be expelled from the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Later, after an international row at governmental level, he was allowed back, but soon felt it was best to leave for good. His new book Mafia State deals with many aspects of Russian life, from the Russian-Georgian war to the rise of the far Right, from Putin’s wealth to rural poverty. His reports are clear, precise and up-to-the-minute.