Customer Rating:  
Summary: Excellent overview, but doesn't meet expectations
Comment: Overall one of the best books out there regarding the Russian criminal state, however, as it starts by detailing the Kursk submarine disaster you start asking yourself "where is this going". Throughout the book there are some brilliant snippets of information but is does not flow as well as it should and the conclusion is the weakest part. Failings aside, it is well written and captivating.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Chilling account of economic rape
Comment: In spare and unemotional prose, page after page of this book lays bare the crimes of the bloodsuckers who have raped the old Soviet Union and reduced the citizens of the country to penury. The Western Press adulates these men, celebrating their ability to buy football clubs or huge houses in London, when it should be damning them for their unbelievable greed, heartlessness and rapacity. Satter's book is one of the best and easiest to read of all the accounts that detail the economic crimes that the oligarchs participated in -- and detail them it does in complete and clear prose. Having visited Russia and seen some of the consequences of what Satter describes, and had frequent contact with many Russians in a professional capacity I was very impressed with this account for its clarity, even-handedness, lack of sensationalism and diligence in getting to the root of individual events. In short,this book answers many of the questions that an alert visitor to the counrty will ask himself and explains much about the attitude of contemporary Russians to both their own society and to the West.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thank you, David. Thank you from honest citizen of Russia.
Comment: What can I say? I lived in Russia for 21 years and this book is the only independent and truthful resource of the information about the current situation in Russia. Covering events from the begining of the 90's to the 2003.
David is the only one persuasive person from the West, who really give a damn about ordinary Russians. And, by giving his attention, to ordinary, sometimes, maybe, too ordinary, but honest and simple people in Russia (which anyway represent 90-95% of population, in my opinion), he opens eyes to more global economical and political issues.
If you're interested in what is really going on in this country, buy this book. It will suit anyone, from ordinary Russians, who want to understand something, living in information vacuum mixed with corrupted government propaganda to the high fly foreign investor, who never visited Russia more far then the center of Moscow (Moscow does not represent Russia at all).
I hope, with David, that maybe this book will change something. At least it changed me.
Thank you, David, from the honest people of Russia.
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