Putin's Russia is a non-fiction book by Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya about life in modern Russia that she calls "Putin's Russia" ^[1]

In the book Politkovskaya tells about transformation of Russia to police state under leadership of Vladimir Putin. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of her book is "that it feels like a Soviet-era dissident's book. Her pieces have that slightly desperate pitch of someone who fears no one is listening - that her own people have given up and that the outside world does not want to hear, or worse, does not care." ^[2]

Politkovskaya describes an army in which conscripts are tortured and hired out as slaves. She described judges who are removed from their positions or brutally assaulted on the street for not following instructions "from above" to let criminals go. She condemns routine kidnappings, murders, rape, and torture of people in Chechnya by Russian military, exemplified by Yuri Budanov. She describes re-emergence of infamous Moscow Serbsky Institute of psychiatry and Dr. Tamara Pechernikova who was notorious for torturing Soviet dissidents in "psikhushkas" of 1960s and 1970s. She tells the story of Pavel Fedulev, a petty criminal who became "the leading industrialist and deputy of the legislature", as a prototype "New Russian".

Politkovskaya accuses Vladimir Putin and FSB of stifling all civil liberties to establish Soviet-style dictatorship, but tells that "it is we who are responsible for Putin's policies" in the conclusion:

Society has shown limitless apathy... As the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that.

External links

• Putins Russia by Anna Politkovskaya on English PEN web site

References