A review by veefuller
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin by David Satter

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

 

#myyearinbooks2022 has shifted slightly and slowed way down in the last few weeks. Like much of the world and Europe specifically, I'm simply trying to make sense of events which seem insane and utterly senseless. 

This #book, which I learned about through an episode of @thisamerlife on #putin, ties together events from my first weeks in #Moscow in autumn 1999 to events in #Ukraine today, although I'm not sure #davidsatter expected {gestures at everything}. 

In September 1999, a series of apartment building bombings in Moscow and other cities, killing more than 300 people, were used to justify a second and far more deadly war with #Chechnya. Grozny was quite literally destroyed with little regard for any human life in the city and barely a building left unscathed. Rumours at the time swirled regarding the true identity of those who planted the bombs in those residential buildings, with serious speculation pointing towards Yeltsin's newly appointed prime minister, #vladimirputin. Putin went from an unknown oddity to a national hero through his surgical destruction of Chechnya, and has remained in power since. What's worse is he's never shown much regard for human life, other than his own, through various crises and tragedies, the worst of which occurred in #Beslan, leaving more than 100 school children dead primarily through his responses.

This book is disturbing for obvious and many reasons. And, incredibly relevant now. I'm left with the uneasy conclusion that a man capable of bombings its own citizens is very much capable of destroying a country, not out of any necessity, but simply because he can. For what? Power.