The Treacherous Path: An Insider's Account of Modern Russia

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It is sometimes argued that ten different things can be said about Russia and all of them can be true. Russia as a country is a complex phenomenon, with different histories, cultural patterns and political orientations. This does not mean that relativism rules. Far from it. The lived experiences of Russians can be fundamentally divergent, but they are united in some sort of common endeavour and an appreciation of different aspects of the truth. This is why accounts provided by people who have been part of that contradictory reality are so important. There have been surprisingly few memoirs from the present generation of leaders and public personalities. While the Mikhail Gorbachev period from the mid-1980s has been covered by numerous memoirs, and the Boris Yeltsin years in the 1990s has been written about extensively, there is much to learn about the years since Vladimir Putin came to office in 2000 – which is why this personal testimony from Vladimir Yakunin is so welcome.

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