PositiveThe Washington Post...Stent expertly walks readers through Moscow’s relations with every region in the world, avoiding the hysteria that warps discussion of the country. Aware that too many books about Russian foreign policy arrive instantly obsolete because they lack a foundation in history or political culture, Stent opens with those subjects ... Stent’s regionally compartmentalized tour of Russian foreign policy lacks a compelling narrative arc. Still, chapters about the interminable deadlock in Russia-Japan relations or the economic sanctions imposed by Europe illuminate the flaws in any depiction of Russia as some global power broker, and the book culminates in a clear-eyed portrayal of the inescapably troubled U.S.-Russia relationship.
Masha Gessen
MixedThe Wall Street JournalA fine writer and storyteller, Ms. Gessen adopts the pose of omniscient narrator, drawing upon interviews to voice her subjects’ inner thoughts. The intricate narrative builds to Russia’s 2011 mass protests—which followed Mr. Putin’s declaration that he would become president again—and the crackdown that came the following year … Even as Ms. Gessen poignantly traces compelling lives, her account of Russian society as a whole puts forth a reductionist argument full of psychospeak about ‘energies’ and an entire society succumbing to depression. She begins with the dubious assertion that one of Soviet society’s decisive troubles derived from the state prohibition against sociology and psychoanalysis, which meant the society ‘had been forbidden to know itself’ … Ms. Gessen is right that ordinary Russians are to an extent complicit in their own oppression, but is the society the part that is totalitarian?
Simon Sebag Montefiore
RaveThe Wall Street JournalNo author on Russia writes better than Mr. Montefiore, whose perceptiveness and portraiture here are frequently sublime...Intentionally or not, the overall effect of Mr. Montefiore’s bravura freak-and-peep show is to exoticize Russia and the Romanovs...That said, much of the book is a marvelous read, and the last third, from fin de siècle insanity to revolutionary cataclysm, is dazzling. Now everything coheres because there is a frame: impending doom. The pages on Nicholas II and Alexandra are perhaps the best ever, economical in expression, simultaneously poignant and trenchant.
