Title: The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB: 320
Authors: Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
- Hardcover:320 pages
- Publisher:PublicAffairs; 1 edition (14 Sep 2010)
- LanguageEnglish
- ISBN-10:1586488023
- ISBN-13:978-1586488024
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 2.8 cm
Product Description
In the first book from inside Russia in more than fifteen years on the influence and role of the security services, two courageous journalists chart how the KGB rose from the Soviet ashes and recreated itself at the prompting and with the assistance of Vladimir Putin. In “The New Nobility”, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse. The security services have played a central – and often mysterious – role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.
About the Author
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are co-founders of the Agentura.Ru website. Soldatov worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006-November 2008. Agentura.Ru has been reported and featured in the New York Times, the Moscow Times, the Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Federation of American Scientists, BBC, as well in websites of The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Center for Defence Information, The Library of Congress, Cambridge Security Programme. Agentura.Ru is quoted by The New York Times as “A Web Site That Came in From the Cold to Unveil Russian Secrets”.
