Russians: The People behind the Power
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Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions by showing that much of what appears inexplicable about the country is logical when seen from the inside. He gets to the heart of why the world's leading energy producer continues to exasperate many in the international community. And he makes clear why President Vladimir Putin remains popular even as the gap widens between the super-rich and the great majority of poor.
Traversing the world's largest country from the violent North Caucasus to Arctic Siberia, Feifer conducted hundreds of intimate conversations about everything from sex and vodka to Russia's complex relationship with the world. From fabulously wealthy oligarchs to the destitute elderly babushki who beg in Moscow's streets, he tells the story of a society bursting with vitality under a leadership rooted in tradition and often on the edge of collapse despite its authoritarian power.
Feifer also draws on formative experiences in Russia's past and illustrative workings of its culture to shed much-needed light on the purposely hidden functioning of its society before, during, and after communism. Woven throughout is an intimate, first-person account of his family history, from his Russian mother's coming of age among Moscow's bohemian artistic elite to his American father's harrowing vodka-fueled run-ins with the KGB.
What emerges is a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes whose forbidding geography, merciless climate, and crushing corruption has nevertheless produced some of the world's greatest art and some of its most remarkable scientific advances. Russians is an expertly observed, gripping profile of a people who will continue challenging the West for the foreseeable future.
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Gregory Feifer. (2014). Russians: The People behind the Power. Grand Central Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Gregory Feifer. 2014. Russians: The People Behind the Power. Grand Central Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Gregory Feifer, Russians: The People Behind the Power. Grand Central Publishing, 2014.
MLA Citation (style guide)Gregory Feifer. Russians: The People Behind the Power. Grand Central Publishing, 2014.
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- bioText: Gregory Feifer is a senior correspondent for Radio Free Europe who also writes for Foreign Affairs and the New Republic. Until recently, he was National Public Radio's Moscow correspondent, and has reported from Russia for almost a decade. During its resurgence under Putin, he filed from other former Soviet republics and across Russia, where he observed the effects of the country's vast new oil wealth on an increasingly nationalistic society as well as Moscow's rekindling of a new Cold War-style opposition to the West. In 2008, Feifer covered the Russia-Georgia war from the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia and traveled to Siberia, Belgrade and Berlin to produce a series on the Kremlin's use of Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, as an instrument of foreign policy.
Before joining NPR in 2005, Feifer — whose mother is Russian — lived in Paris and New York, and wrote for outlets including Agence France Presse and World Policy Journal. He witnessed the coup d'état attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, and later, on a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs, examined the end of the Yeltsin era and Russia's subsequent transformation into an authoritarian state.
Feifer is the author of The Great Gamble, a history of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and coauthor of Spy Handler with former KGB colonel Victor Cherkashin. - name: Gregory Feifer
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- From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories to portray the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today.
Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions by showing that much of what appears inexplicable about the country is logical when seen from the inside. He gets to the heart of why the world's leading energy producer continues to exasperate many in the international community. And he makes clear why President Vladimir Putin remains popular even as the gap widens between the super-rich and the great majority of poor.
Traversing the world's largest country from the violent North Caucasus to Arctic Siberia, Feifer conducted hundreds of intimate conversations about everything from sex and vodka to Russia's complex relationship with the world. From fabulously wealthy oligarchs to the destitute elderly babushki who beg in Moscow's streets, he tells the story of a society bursting with vitality under a leadership rooted in tradition and often on the edge of collapse despite its authoritarian power.
Feifer also draws on formative experiences in Russia's past and illustrative workings of its culture to shed much-needed light on the purposely hidden functioning of its society before, during, and after communism. Woven throughout is an intimate, first-person account of his family history, from his Russian mother's coming of age among Moscow's bohemian artistic elite to his American father's harrowing vodka-fueled run-ins with the KGB.
What emerges is a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes whose forbidding geography, merciless climate, and crushing corruption has nevertheless produced some of the world's greatest art and some of its most remarkable scientific advances. Russians is an expertly observed, gripping profile of a people who will continue challenging the West for the foreseeable future. - reviews
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January 6, 2014
Early on in his second book, Feifer (The Great Gamble) makes clear his ambitious aim, which is to provide "a definitive explanation of what makes Russia Russian." While this goal might at first seem audacious, he is well-qualified, having worked for eight years as a journalist in Russia. In addition, his mother was born in Kazan and his father was a guide in the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, where the two met. The book is an impressive piece of journalism, an effective mix of history, letters, current affairs, family history, interviews, and personal narrative, all of which addresses the premise that certain "formative influences" have shaped attitudes, behaviors, and a social and political order that is sometimes confounding to the Western mind. From alarming rates of alcoholism to the legacy of Siberian prison camps, from the creativity of Russian arts to corruption and "clan politics," the book provides a nuanced view of Russia, its people, and its place in a changing world. Feifer's assessment is especially critical of Putin's authoritarianism and he is admittedly pessimistic about the possibility of change in the near future, but the book makes a convincing argument for the importance of a clearer understanding of the Russian people and their values.
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January 1, 2014
Former NPR Moscow correspondent Feifer (The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan, 2009) returns with an analysis of the Russian character derived from his family history and many years of research and travels. In a volume that's very current--the author delivers commentary on both Pussy Riot and Edward Snowden--Feifer presents a series of topics that, combined, paint a stark and only mildly hopeful portrait of Russia. Poverty, drinking, cold and punishment--these are among his principal subjects. Throughout, the author uses a variety of techniques: memoir, interviews with significant Russians and others in the region, summaries of key historical events, and anecdotes about and documents from family and friends (his father is also a writer about the region). Feifer is resolutely anti-Putin, condemning him continually for returning the country to some of its nastier ways after the fall of the Soviet Union and the elevation of hopes in the West. (He writes that Putin's abilities are "feeble at best.") In the opening chapter on poverty, the author offers some grim evidence about living conditions in the country: inefficient health care (HIV-AIDS is a major problem), racist hate crimes, the breakdown of infrastructure and corruption everywhere. Conversely, he follows with a chapter about the vast wealth in the country, mostly from energy; the author (and others) recognizes that Russia's dependence on energy income presents a long-term problem. The Russian fondness for vodka, writes the author, may be a cliche, but it's one based on oceans of evidence. Feifer chides the Russian government for doing little about the problem, and he writes about Russian families, the roles of women, the attitudes toward gays and other minorities, racism and anti-Semitism. He highlights the cronyism and the pervasive corruption, and he warns Western countries not to have any "illusions about what kind of country they are dealing with." Dark but skillfully painted pictures at an exhibition.COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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