The New Tsar

By Steven Lee Myers,

Book cover of The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

Book description

The epic tale of Vladimir Putin's path to power, as he emerged from obscurity to become one of the world's most important and dangerous leaders.

Former New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief Steven Lee Myers has followed Putin since well before the recent events in the Ukraine, and gives us…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The New Tsar as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Myers presents a powerful narrative of Putin’s rise from being an apparent “accidental president” to his consolidation of power and ability to use state terror to achieve dictatorial power in an authoritarian regime. The biography chapters show Putin emerging as a teenage street thug whose family suffered during World War II to his rise in Leningrad and then Kremlin politics where he emerged as a KGB agent in Dresden during the Fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-90. Putin was obviously traumatized by this experience and returning to Russia he became involved in Kremlin politics, eventually succeeding Boris Yeltsin as…

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