As the 2012 Presidential elections are gearing up
consider this scenario; the sitting US Vice-President leaves office and is
replaced by an obscure government official about which little is known. The
President then steps aside and the relatively unknown VP is now sitting on the
Oval Office. The new President begins to methodically revert the country back
to less democratic days; say by removing women’s right to vote and eliminating
the direct election of Senators until more and more power is concentrated at
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Does this sound like the farfetched plot of a bad
movie? Unfortunately not. An eerily similar scenario has played itself out in
Russia starring Vladimir Putin according to the new book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen. Gessen, a well-established author and journalist and
citizen of both Russia and the United States, has written what is likely her
most aggressive and controversial work.
Admitting to myself that I am not at all familiar
with the former and now again President of Russia I was
interested in learning how unlikely his rise to power truly was. The one
shortcoming of the book is that Gessen is not able to fully explain, which is
likely due to a lack of clear, reputable information, Putin’s rise from humble
beginnings to the leadership of the country. This shortcoming is quickly
overlooked because the book paints a very vivid and frightening picture of
recent developments in Russia during the Putin regime.