This is a biography of Vladimir Putin, a detailed story of his rise to power. Yes, it can be a bit dry, but it’s well worth reading, especially if you’re interested in the roots of where Putin came from, as well as how he’s come to exercise his power.
Clocking in at about 600 pages, it’s not a small book, and there’s a lot that’s covered, a lot of events that might get a passing reference in other texts gets time on this stage. That being said, where this book truly excels is how Myers digs deep into the early career of Putin, his time in the KGB, his formative early years in the Russian government. Myers has done a lot of work to shine light on a part of Putin’s life that can seem shrouded in mystery.
Putin, however, has a gift for switching the narrative and gilding the lily. So, here we see how he took an event, like Chechnya, and brutally suppressed it, then turned it into something that bolstered his popularity and increased national zeal and fervor at the same time. Then, we see how all of that impacted his political career and prospects. It all spirals a bit, and Myers does a fantastic job at showing the formative events in Putin’s career, and how he managed to take them and use them to create… himself.
That is truly where this book rises above the others. Here, we see a lot of events we might only know about in passing, but through studied focus on Putin, we see how he used them as tools to further his own political prospects and career. There’s a lot of detail here, and a lot of names and events. If you aren’t into this sort of thing already, you might get a bit lost in all of it. However, if you stick it out, the reward is well worth the effort. Very rarely have I seen an author do as good of a job showing the rise of a powerful person, and how he used events as building blocks, how he changed the narrative, and how certain happenings informed his perspectives on the West, NATO, the UN and more.
I just finished this book last night, and to say I was captivated is an understatement. I remember a lot of the deaths mentioned in these pages, but so many of the details that are discussed here never made news headlines. Furthermore, Blake goes back in history a bit, and talks about how Putin made the shift from KGB to powerbroker in Petersburg, ties with various crime syndicates (and why he formed them). What From Russia With Blood does really well, though, is show how past events impact current events through a more personal lens.
The Moscow Bombings, and the gassing of the theater, the war in Chechnya are all things I’ve heard about in the periphery, but they never really made huge headway in Western media. Blake, however, ties them all to Putin, the dynamics of his power, and then his covert assassination program of expatriates. It's quite a tangled web, and somehow it remains clear throughout, regardless of which thread the author is pulling at the time.
I read this to better understand Putin's power, and how he operates behind the scenes to keep a grip on his empire, as well as how that might inform current events. And while you might be wondering how this, in any way, informs the current situation in Ukraine, it’s important to realize that nothing that is happening is really new. All of this has been done before, and Putin absolutely has some default behavior patterns which you’ll pick up on if you read enough about him. This book does a magnificent job of showing how Putin views the West, and how he keeps an iron fist clamped around the source of his power and authority.
Blake uses declassified texts to weave a narrative of a covert assassination campaign which has been used to tidy up loose ends via people falling out of windows, or being dosed with Novichok, and how the UK government often overlooked this in favor of strengthening Russia/UK ties. While Blake does poo-poo the UK government a bit for how they handled this, I tend to take a bit of a more lenient view of it all, as it must have been an impossible situation for the government at the time. That being said, I'm not a British person, so take that for what it's worth. I'm looking at it from the outside.
There are some weaknesses here. Blake obviously has an agenda and she’s setting out to prove her point. This doesn’t mean she’s wrong on any of this, it just means that sometimes there’s spin. However, the way Blake weaves together events like the fall of the USSR, the rise of organized crime, brutality like what happened in Chechnya and the Moscow Apartment Bombings right when Putin was really solidifying his power is nothing short of captivating, and extremely informative. To see how the man operates is to better understand how he interacts with the world.
What surprised me about this one was how it felt a bit more personal. Blake weaves together interviews, court transcripts, letters, emails and more, giving all of these people their own voices, which is something I think a lot of nonfiction books lack....more
I have read this book twice, and I’ve put off reviewing it both times until now. The reason for the delay isn’t that grand. It’s nothing that will impress you. This is just one of those books I don’t quite know how to review. One big reason for that is because, with all things history, Stalin is one of my obsessions. The guy was just so… Stalin. So much of history hinged on him, and he was such a huge player on the global stage, but for various reasons, we don’t hear a whole lot about him in the west.
I think, at this point, I’ve read at least fifteen Stalin biographies, and countless books about his various purges, and other pivotal things that took place while he was in power. I mean, when I say the guy fascinates me, I mean it. I don’t admire him, but I find the dynamics of his particular brand of power absolutely captivating.
So when I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. World War II is also interesting to me, probably right below Stalin on my personal interest level chart, but it’s hard to get any really good accounts of the Eastern Front of World War II. In school, we learned all about what happened in England and France, but it wasn’t until I was older, doing my own nonfiction reading in my free time, that I learned about the true meat and potatoes of World War II. The power struggle between Stalin and Hitler, the fact that the real heart of that particular part of the global conflict was in neither France nor England, but in the Eastern European borderlands where a war of ideology was waged between nationalists and communists.
Stalin’s War is one of those rare books that scratched an intellectual itch as nothing else has. A lot is going on in this book, but the Soviet policies in the 1920s and 1930s were fascinating, and really helped me understand how and why Stalin felt he needed to position himself on the global stage in a certain way in response to some of the European conflicts and changes happening nearby, leading up to 1939. It gave a bit of context for the Nazi-Soviet pact, which has always had a lot of attention because it was so unexpected. However, this book, with all its context and information, does show that Stalin wasn’t, perhaps, as hoodwinked and surprised by Hitler as popular belief might have it. According to this book, Stalin wasn’t surprised by Hitler acting against the pact. Rather than being blindsided, McMeekin argues that Stalin knew Hitler would invade eventually, and he prepared for that very thing to happen, but the Soviet army, for all its size, was just not nearly as good at mobile warfare as the Nazis.
This book, in some ways, was a rude awakening. There were a lot of things I didn’t know before reading it that was detailed here. For example, how Stalin and Hitler learned from each other in the 1930s, even occasionally collaborating and carefully staying out of each other’s ways. Stalin’s antisemitism nearly rivaled Hitler’s, and some of his baser policies and actions in that regard are covered as well. Stalin’s various propaganda campaigns are covered here, as well as their purpose. Stalin’s puppet governments in Finland, his gambit with Poland, and various other important political moments are detailed, as well as Churchill and Stalin’s conference when Churchill offered Stalin a good chunk of the Balkans, and the Yalta conference, and many other important political moments.
The United States and allied involvement in World War II is covered quite extensively, and McMeekin doesn’t paint everyone in the best light, though I quickly learned I enjoyed having the veneer polished off some of these larger-than-life historical figures. How a lot of the things that happened during World War II ended up playing out after the dust settled, including some policy decisions across the board that lead to the Cold War was absolutely fascinating. History is not a vacuum, and I really appreciated McMeekin’s ability to connect the dots and show just how the dominos fell. The author comes across as strictly anti-communist, but he has done his research, and he has a very balanced way of presenting historical figures and events in a light that feels both justified and not overly favorable or cruel. Balance, perhaps, is one thing a lot of books on this particular topic, featuring these particular men, lacks, and I think McMeekin did an amazing job here.
Mostly what I took away from reading this book was how much Stalin was doing without anyone noticing, or if they noticed, they sort of whistled and turned their back on him in an “Oh, don’t look at Stalin, just let him do his thing” kind of way. There was just so much going on in Stalin’s political office that is never really covered by many of the popular World War II books. From setting up puppet governments to allying himself with the right people and then using those alliances to his gains, to the lying and the falsifying information, to the manipulations, the gambles, and more. Stalin was playing the long game. He was at the center of all of it, and due to various political and propaganda reasons, we just don’t see that much of this side of the war in the West.
If nothing else, this book underscored my belief that Stalin was perhaps one of the most powerful, adept manipulators in modern history. The guy just knew how to work people.
McMeekin comes to a few very interesting, and I’d say controversial conclusions. First, he determines that World War II was probably one of the few historical wars that were absolutely justified and had to happen. That, I think, is inarguable. Secondly, however, he determines the results of the war weren’t exactly as clear-cut as we seem to think they are. If the war was fought to save Eastern Europe, it failed. If the war in Asia was over Manchuria, Stalin ended up gaining territory. If the war was to save Western Europe, it could have likely been achieved with negotiations and a lower death toll. In the end, no matter how you cut it, for at least a while, Stalin was the man behind the curtain, manipulating events, and ultimately, McMeekin argues, he came out the victor. ...more
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