Oleg Gordievsky

The Great Bear Boar

Putin and the Rise of Russia: The Country that Came in from the Cold

By

Weidenfeld & Nicolson 272pp £20 order from our bookshop

Michael Stuermer is a renowned German professor of history who taught at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg and has lectured at several universities in the USA. He has written several books on German history and has now crafted an excellent and important work on contemporary Russia. A quarter of the material is about Putin, undoubtedly for commercial reasons. Unfortunately, Russian aggression against Georgia has changed Western approaches and attitudes towards the country, making the book partially obsolete.

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