Searing and deeply personal ... Bennetts’s book details Russia’s political devolution on a terrifyingly grander and more violent scale—one with no apparent hope of Putin ever conceding any future election or, for that matter, any power. Bennetts argues compellingly that Putin cultivated a national character of 'cynicism and apathy, as well as an acceptance of violence' ... Passionate, heartbreaking.
Marc Bennetts reckons that he knows Russia a lot better than Vladimir Putin ... He loves Russia too, more than Putin. Or at least he did. This book is his pitch-perfect account of how his adopted country descended into evil and madness ... Haunting and insightful.
Ultimately, Western readers would only care about a distant nation if the correspondent reporting from it feels its suffering as her own suffering ... Bennetts’s book passes this test.
Crazed propaganda, brutal repression, and helpless public acquiescence underpin Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime, according to this heartbroken memoir ... In Bennetts’s vivid rendering, Russia has fallen into an almost medieval mindset, with citizens exerting zero control over an abusive officialdom.
