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Available
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Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2016), Edition: First Edition ~1st Printing, 240 pages
Description
Business. Nonfiction. More than twenty years ago, longtime NPR correspondent Anne Garrels began to visit the region of Chelyabinsk, an aging military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. Her goal was to chart the social and political aftershocks of the USSR's collapse. On her trips to an area once closed to the West, Garrels discovered a populace for whom the new democratic freedoms were as traumatic as they were delightful. The region suffered a severe economic crisis in the early 1990s, and the next twenty years would only bring more turmoil as well as a growing identity crisis and antagonism toward foreigners. The city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as corruption and intolerance grew more entrenched. In Putin Country, we meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a group of determined evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers try to cope with a corrupt system. Drawing on these encounters, Garrels explains why Vladimir Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they encounter from day to day.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member debnance
If you are headed to Russia, you couldn't have a better guide than Anne Garrels; Garrels knows the stories in Russia and she can tell them better than anyone else. Russian stories are bleak, with corruption and graft and greed, with alcoholism and despair and desperation in every tale. Russia is
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stories of repression of free speech, stories of hazing in the military, stories of people exposed to nuclear waste, stories of thwarted hope. Garrels listens to them all and shares them with us, coolly, dispassionately, an eye always there seeking a bit of hopeful news amid the dark. Show Less
LibraryThing member nbmars
Anne Garrels is a journalist and commentator for National Public Radio who has covered Russia for years. She wanted to examine the remarkable changes in that country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but she felt it would be more informative to see the changes in the lives of “ordinary
Chelyabinsk had been badly treated under the Soviet regime. It was a center of nuclear power research, and the Soviets were inclined to sacrifice safety in the interest of rapid progress. A number of accidents occurred, and there were hundreds of incidents of radiation sickness. Few if any of these events were admitted at the time by the government or reported in the news. (Horrifying accounts are now available; you can read about them here.) Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the successor state has made progress in cleaning up the environment, but is still very secretive about any problems that occurred in the past or that continue to exist.
In addition to the environmental problems, the economy of Chelyabinsk is now suffering as well. As Garrels observes, the Russian economy boomed overall when oil prices were high, and many fortunes were made by a new class of “oligarchs.” Moscow, the capital, has become vibrant and prosperous. But Garrels reports that things are not so rosy in the hinterlands, where austerity has resulted from the lowering of oil prices.
Money is still being spent in some sectors. The Russian state allows freedom of religion, actively favoring the Russian Orthodox Church. In Chelyabinsk just as in the big cities, many of the Church’s splendidly ornate cathedrals and monasteries have been restored to their original brilliance, once again supplying the "opiate of the masses" scorned by Karl Marx.
Garrels sees Russia as going through something of an identity crisis. The gene pool was severely depleted by the horrors of World War II and Stalin’s purges. Women still outnumber men by a significant margin. The Russian military complains that it has difficulty finding suitable recruits. Alcoholism and drug addiction are quite prevalent among Russian males.
Nevertheless, most Russians, she avers, are happy with or at least satisfied with the job Vladimir Putin has done. His approval rating is in the mid 80% range! This high rating results in part because most Russians strongly disapproved of Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, of whom Garrels says, he “and the ‘liberals’ who took the reins of government in Russia [from the Soviets] were unable to resist the lure of getting rich quickly by corrupt methods.” Moreover, under Yeltsin, criminal gangs often used violence to achieve their goals. Corruption under Putin remains rampant, but at least order has been restored, and the economy is vastly better than it was before, even with setbacks from lower oil prices.
Garrels found some Russians who strongly disapproved of Putin. There are civil and human rights advocates who feel constrained by a strong atmosphere of state-sponsored censorship and the self-censorship that inevitably follows. Garrels says there is an “unbridgeable gap” between Putin’s supporters and Russians who think country is on wrong track — much like the current situation in the USA. It should also be noted, however, that Russians in general are not as wedded to the ideal of “individual liberties” (versus policies reflecting the good of the collective) as we are in the West.
In addition, most Russians are dependent on state-sponsored news media, where Putin has been able to shift the blame for many of Russia’s problems to the West, at least in the eyes of his enthusiasts. Russians also resent the fact that the West seems unaware of the sacrifice they made in WWII, having sustained 95% of the military casualties inflicted on the three major Allied powers (the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R.) To ask Americans, you’d think they won the war practically single-handedly.
In any event, the improvements in Russia since the Soviet government and since the tenure of Yeltsin are striking. It is not unreasonable for Russians to felt grateful to Putin for all the advances of the country generally and in their own economic situations in particular.
Garrels tells the story of Chelyabinsk in a series of chapters that read like features on NPR. They are full of interesting revelations, such as in the one titled “The Forensic Expert” about Alexander Vlasov, the region’s deputy forensic pathologist, who worked on excavating a mass grave from Soviet times.
My wife and I visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, and found them delightful. But obviously what one sees as a tourist, and in only the big cities, does not reveal much about life away from big urban centers. Garrels’s book provides an interesting counterpoint.
Evaluation: These snapshots of a Russia away from the big cosmopolitan areas of Russia are entertaining and shed light on a lesser-known region of that country.
(JAB)
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Russians,” away from the capital city of Moscow. She chose Chelyabinsk, formerly a military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow at the southern edge of the Ural Mountains. The remote region of Chelyabinsk is known for being “one of the most polluted places on the planet.”Chelyabinsk had been badly treated under the Soviet regime. It was a center of nuclear power research, and the Soviets were inclined to sacrifice safety in the interest of rapid progress. A number of accidents occurred, and there were hundreds of incidents of radiation sickness. Few if any of these events were admitted at the time by the government or reported in the news. (Horrifying accounts are now available; you can read about them here.) Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the successor state has made progress in cleaning up the environment, but is still very secretive about any problems that occurred in the past or that continue to exist.
In addition to the environmental problems, the economy of Chelyabinsk is now suffering as well. As Garrels observes, the Russian economy boomed overall when oil prices were high, and many fortunes were made by a new class of “oligarchs.” Moscow, the capital, has become vibrant and prosperous. But Garrels reports that things are not so rosy in the hinterlands, where austerity has resulted from the lowering of oil prices.
Money is still being spent in some sectors. The Russian state allows freedom of religion, actively favoring the Russian Orthodox Church. In Chelyabinsk just as in the big cities, many of the Church’s splendidly ornate cathedrals and monasteries have been restored to their original brilliance, once again supplying the "opiate of the masses" scorned by Karl Marx.
Garrels sees Russia as going through something of an identity crisis. The gene pool was severely depleted by the horrors of World War II and Stalin’s purges. Women still outnumber men by a significant margin. The Russian military complains that it has difficulty finding suitable recruits. Alcoholism and drug addiction are quite prevalent among Russian males.
Nevertheless, most Russians, she avers, are happy with or at least satisfied with the job Vladimir Putin has done. His approval rating is in the mid 80% range! This high rating results in part because most Russians strongly disapproved of Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, of whom Garrels says, he “and the ‘liberals’ who took the reins of government in Russia [from the Soviets] were unable to resist the lure of getting rich quickly by corrupt methods.” Moreover, under Yeltsin, criminal gangs often used violence to achieve their goals. Corruption under Putin remains rampant, but at least order has been restored, and the economy is vastly better than it was before, even with setbacks from lower oil prices.
Garrels found some Russians who strongly disapproved of Putin. There are civil and human rights advocates who feel constrained by a strong atmosphere of state-sponsored censorship and the self-censorship that inevitably follows. Garrels says there is an “unbridgeable gap” between Putin’s supporters and Russians who think country is on wrong track — much like the current situation in the USA. It should also be noted, however, that Russians in general are not as wedded to the ideal of “individual liberties” (versus policies reflecting the good of the collective) as we are in the West.
In addition, most Russians are dependent on state-sponsored news media, where Putin has been able to shift the blame for many of Russia’s problems to the West, at least in the eyes of his enthusiasts. Russians also resent the fact that the West seems unaware of the sacrifice they made in WWII, having sustained 95% of the military casualties inflicted on the three major Allied powers (the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R.) To ask Americans, you’d think they won the war practically single-handedly.
In any event, the improvements in Russia since the Soviet government and since the tenure of Yeltsin are striking. It is not unreasonable for Russians to felt grateful to Putin for all the advances of the country generally and in their own economic situations in particular.
Garrels tells the story of Chelyabinsk in a series of chapters that read like features on NPR. They are full of interesting revelations, such as in the one titled “The Forensic Expert” about Alexander Vlasov, the region’s deputy forensic pathologist, who worked on excavating a mass grave from Soviet times.
My wife and I visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, and found them delightful. But obviously what one sees as a tourist, and in only the big cities, does not reveal much about life away from big urban centers. Garrels’s book provides an interesting counterpoint.
Evaluation: These snapshots of a Russia away from the big cosmopolitan areas of Russia are entertaining and shed light on a lesser-known region of that country.
(JAB)
Show Less
LibraryThing member Paul_S
The journalistic scepticism is a bit one sided here, the author takes almost all accounts at face value. Overall a very sympathetic picture of the Russians. Fails to address how decades of communism has shaped the nation and paints the people as somehow externally constrained by the government and
Concentrates on anecdotes - I'd like to see them put in context of more general facts.
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not complicit in the culture under which they live.Concentrates on anecdotes - I'd like to see them put in context of more general facts.
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LibraryThing member qaphsiel
Most people would agree that to look only at New York City or Washington, DC is to see the United States through a peculiar lens. You get a distorted image at best. By a similar token, many would also say that the political and cultural elites in the US have been doing just this and it is what
This, of course, in no way confined to how foreigners view the US: we all take this mental shortcut: Germany through Berlin and Munich, Egypt through Cairo, or Russia through Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Putin Country seeks to widen the lens through which we peer into the former Soviet Union. It takes us to a rusty, downtrodden land far from Moscow and distant indeed from St. Petersburg. The city of Chelyabinsk’s stands, in many ways, for Detroit or Memphis—and its one million souls are beset by many of the same ills: economic irrelevance, epidemic drug addiction, and the judgments of their more cosmopolitan fellows in the political and cultural capitals.
While I while I do not see any one slice of the United States as being more ‘American’ than any other, I do see where someone is coming from when they make such a claim about Detroit or Memphis or similar places. Certainly, by virtue of not being on the coasts, they have held on to aspects of their cultures that would have mutated under the constant and intimate contact with other communities experienced in the New Yorks of the world.
To be clear, I’m not making any judgments here: not about cultural mixing and melding and appropriation (which is more or less uncontrollable in any event) nor about whether one culture is superior to another. I am saying though, that the high-profile cities one typically views their host nations through are often quite different from the less travelled (at least by foreigners) places of those nations.
Chelyabinsk certainly falls into this latter category.
Just as a foreigner’s first trip into the US interior opens one’s eyes to its cultural variety so does a journey into Middle Russia, even if only by book. As you meet the people of Chelyabinsk and their land and learn their collective history, you cannot help but see a harsher reflection of post-industrial—some would say the real—America.
To make Chelyabinsk, take Detroit and add a history of nuclear waste dumping and general environmental devastation, deep-seated corruption, a couple decades of national humiliation, and a grossly mismanaged ‘transition’ to capitalism. As you travel through these travails, page by page, your sympathy for its people grows. You wonder that anyone still lives there, let along tries to make it a better place. And yet they do: just as Americans in Detroit do.
The situation is simultaneously so similar and so much worse, that if a bumbling real estate tycoon can make it with Middle American, you feel no surprise that a more skilled and cutthroat version enjoys sweeping popularity here.
In the eyes of many Middle Americans, the establishments of both parties have failed them over and over for decades. So, when they were given an alternative, even an obviously flawed one, they took it. In the words of a conservative friend, “What else can we do? Who else are we going to vote for?” Gorbachev and Yeltsin, as different as they were, both failed the Chelyabinskites of Russia so when a skillful, capable strong man who spoke to their complaints came along, they jumped at the chance to put him in office.
The final tragedy here then is that the Detroiters and the Chelyabinskites are still being failed. Trump embarrasses America and horrifies much of the rest of the world while being so mired in scandal he lacks the political capital to push his agenda. At the same time, while Putin has managed to prop up his popularity through pride-inducing military action, the plight of Russians remains little changed.
Like all analogies, Middle Russia as Middle American has obvious limits. Nevertheless even if Putin Country wasn’t as well written as it is, I would still tell you to read it for this experience of learning not just about a wider Russia, but of finding the echoes of a wider America in it.
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paved the way for a non-establishment candidate, especially one who expressed the right populist and nationalist positions, to become a viable presidential candidate.This, of course, in no way confined to how foreigners view the US: we all take this mental shortcut: Germany through Berlin and Munich, Egypt through Cairo, or Russia through Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Putin Country seeks to widen the lens through which we peer into the former Soviet Union. It takes us to a rusty, downtrodden land far from Moscow and distant indeed from St. Petersburg. The city of Chelyabinsk’s stands, in many ways, for Detroit or Memphis—and its one million souls are beset by many of the same ills: economic irrelevance, epidemic drug addiction, and the judgments of their more cosmopolitan fellows in the political and cultural capitals.
While I while I do not see any one slice of the United States as being more ‘American’ than any other, I do see where someone is coming from when they make such a claim about Detroit or Memphis or similar places. Certainly, by virtue of not being on the coasts, they have held on to aspects of their cultures that would have mutated under the constant and intimate contact with other communities experienced in the New Yorks of the world.
To be clear, I’m not making any judgments here: not about cultural mixing and melding and appropriation (which is more or less uncontrollable in any event) nor about whether one culture is superior to another. I am saying though, that the high-profile cities one typically views their host nations through are often quite different from the less travelled (at least by foreigners) places of those nations.
Chelyabinsk certainly falls into this latter category.
Just as a foreigner’s first trip into the US interior opens one’s eyes to its cultural variety so does a journey into Middle Russia, even if only by book. As you meet the people of Chelyabinsk and their land and learn their collective history, you cannot help but see a harsher reflection of post-industrial—some would say the real—America.
To make Chelyabinsk, take Detroit and add a history of nuclear waste dumping and general environmental devastation, deep-seated corruption, a couple decades of national humiliation, and a grossly mismanaged ‘transition’ to capitalism. As you travel through these travails, page by page, your sympathy for its people grows. You wonder that anyone still lives there, let along tries to make it a better place. And yet they do: just as Americans in Detroit do.
The situation is simultaneously so similar and so much worse, that if a bumbling real estate tycoon can make it with Middle American, you feel no surprise that a more skilled and cutthroat version enjoys sweeping popularity here.
In the eyes of many Middle Americans, the establishments of both parties have failed them over and over for decades. So, when they were given an alternative, even an obviously flawed one, they took it. In the words of a conservative friend, “What else can we do? Who else are we going to vote for?” Gorbachev and Yeltsin, as different as they were, both failed the Chelyabinskites of Russia so when a skillful, capable strong man who spoke to their complaints came along, they jumped at the chance to put him in office.
The final tragedy here then is that the Detroiters and the Chelyabinskites are still being failed. Trump embarrasses America and horrifies much of the rest of the world while being so mired in scandal he lacks the political capital to push his agenda. At the same time, while Putin has managed to prop up his popularity through pride-inducing military action, the plight of Russians remains little changed.
Like all analogies, Middle Russia as Middle American has obvious limits. Nevertheless even if Putin Country wasn’t as well written as it is, I would still tell you to read it for this experience of learning not just about a wider Russia, but of finding the echoes of a wider America in it.
Show Less
Awards
Pushkin House Russian Book Prize (Shortlist — 2017)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2016
Physical description
240 p.; 5.76 inches
ISBN
0374247722 / 9780374247720