![]() ![]() He ascended to power nine years later, and now controls the vast Russian Federation as tightly as a czar. Putin, a KGB operative, cannily decided to leave the agency during the Soviet collapse in 1991. New York Times reporter Myers has written a timely, richly detailed, if too narrowly focused biography of Vladimir Putin. The New Tsar is a staggering achievement, a deeply researched and essential biography of one of the most important and destabilizing world leaders in recent history, a man whose merciless rule has become inextricably bound to Russia's forseeable future. ![]() On the other, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism-unyielding in its brutal repression of dissent and newly assertive politically and militarily in regions like Crimea and the Middle East. ![]() On the one hand, Putin's many domestic reforms-from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights-have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. This gripping narrative of Putin's rise to power recounts Putin's origins-from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad to his ascent through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule in the Kremlin. As the world struggles to confront a bolder Russia, the importance of understanding the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin has never been greater. ![]()
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