Short-listed for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize

From the award-winning author of Naked in Baghdad comes Anne Garrels's revealing look into the lives of ordinary Russians, Putin Country.

More than twenty years ago, the NPR correspondent Anne Garrels first visited Chelyabinsk, a gritty military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contained beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Garrels's goal was to chart the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.'s collapse by traveling to Russia's heartland.

Returning again and again, Garrels found that the area's new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Sushi restaurants proliferated; so did shakedowns. In the neighboring countryside, villages crumbled into the ground. Far from the glitz of Moscow, the people of Chelyabinsk were working out their country's destiny, person by person.

In Putin Country, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists who champion the rights of orphans and disabled children, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a circle of determined Protestant evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers trying to cope with inescapable payoffs and institutionalized negligence. As Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and war in Ukraine leads to Western sanctions and a lower standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country's direction. Through it all, Garrels sympathetically charts an ongoing identity crisis. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? What kind of pride and cohesion can it offer? Drawing on close friendships sustained over many years, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter.

Correcting the misconceptions of Putin's supporters and critics alike, Garrels's portrait of Russia's silent majority is both essential and engaging reading at a time when cold war tensions are resurgent.

• We started tracking this book on March 21, 2016.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 25 times in the past 3,347 days.
• The current price of this book is $11.99 last checked one day ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $0.99 last reached on September 2, 2022.
• This book has been $0.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $12.99 last reached on May 16, 2025.
• This book has been $12.99 4 times since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesAnthropologyCultural
• Business & MoneyEconomicsUrban & Regional
• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesSociologyUrban

• Publication Date: March 15, 2016
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 190 Pages
• File Size: 463 KB