Archive - August 11, 2019

IN PUTIN’S FOOTSTEPS: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones  St. Martin’s Press By Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler (Morocco 1988-90) 320 pages February 19, 2019 $18.89 (hardback); $14.99 (Kindle); $24.60 (Audio CD)   Reviewed by Bea Hogan (Uzbekistan 1992-94) Why is Putin so popular? The hand-picked successor of Boris Yeltsin was an odd choice: a soft-spoken former spook who’d once helmed the Federal Security Service (FSB), the agency that came after the KGB. Putin took power as the new millennium dawned, and at the time, seemed destined to be a placeholder, a mere footnote in history. But three months later he won the presidential election in a landslide and has been consolidating power ever since. It’s hard to imagine how a man of diminutive stature and unassuming presence—in a land that prizes macho men—could become such a towering figure on the world stage. And . . .