The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
by Steven Lee Myers
View on GoodreadsA New York Times Moscow correspondent's comprehensive biography of Vladimir Putin — KGB officer, deputy mayor, prime minister, president — through the early 2010s.
Core ideas
- Putin's worldview was set in the late-Soviet KGB and the chaotic 1990s — he reads everything through "what protects the state from disorder," and "the state" usually means him.
- The early Putin years had real reformist content and Western engagement; the turn toward kleptocracy, anti-Western posture, and aggressive nationalism was a process, not a starting point.
- The book's frame is useful because it predates the 2022 full-scale Ukraine invasion — you can watch Myers' subject harden into the figure of the later books.
Published2014
Pages592
ISBN9780307961617
ReadFeb 2023
