Masha Gessen Chapter Summary

This type of an environment, motivated by congenial intentions, and imposed by brutal force, created the perfect conditions for a serial killer to travel around the great Soviet Union and murder hundreds of people. As a consequence of this new transition to a state of “no crime”, officers were required to find and declare someone guilty, regardless of their innocence, creating the perfect environment for Andrei Sidorov, to travel around and kill freely without any retribution applied back. Smith’s description of the “enemies of the party” were regarded as more inferior than “spies” and “saboteurs”, is foreshadowing the prejudicial actions implemented on Leo Demidov and to all the people to whom the Ministry of State Security and the Party line thought they were “doubters of the society which awaited them”. Accordingly, these people were tortured and persuaded into confessing lies; for motives that Leo Demidov was fighting for, discovering the real murderer responsible for these merciless crimes. However, for the state officials to declare this a nationwide murder is the equivalent to taking “a giant step backwards.”

In order to improve and conduct a nation, new reforms and new implementation are essential to be addressed. Valdimir Putin, the current president of Russia, has diligently delegated and decided upon many proposals, and therefore assured the safety of his people. Putin has considerably secured Russia’s stability by founding a family holiday, influencing a decrease in poverty, and deciding upon opposing NATO.

Michie starts out the book with explaining what it is like to be an actual teacher educator. As Michie started out as teacher and found out that he was unprepared for teaching, so he did not know what to expect from himself as a teacher or from his students. I can only imagine what it was like to walk into a classroom unprepared to teach, not knowing what to expect, unsure if my students were learning. He thought, “students should be encouraged to creatively express themselves, that their voices should be not only heard, but valued” (Michie, 2012, 3). I agree with what Michie says because children should be encouraged to speak and express themselves freely. They should be themselves without any problems at school and at home. Nobody

Just recently a known political activist, Vedzhie Kashka, abruptly died after meeting with Russian Security forces. She collapsed during the meeting then died shortly after it was over. Since she was from Crimea Stalin banned her as well as many other Crimeans from Russia when the Soviet Union was in power. When Putin annexed Crimea she spoke out for her people, she was known as “a legendary woman of the Crimean Tatar national movement”. She worked with many people to advocate and improve the rights and civil liberties of displaced persons. Earlier in the month and before her meeting she heavily scrutinized the Russian government for the persecution of the Tartar minority. Russia has perpetually tried to put end end to Tatar Crimeans and “Silence the Peninsula” of Crimea.

Putin grew up very poor with three entire families in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Russin President even remembers hunting rats in his apartment stairwell.

With Russia having Putin has their President they have been increasing their nation with more and more power. Not only has their nation been increasing power so had their leader. Putin is a man who has many interesting aspects to him as a person and his governmental styles. He gained this from many different people including Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. When describing Vladimir Putin and his policies John Locke and Thomas Hobbes are both somewhat right, but when it comes to Vladimir Putin was a person only hobbes is right.

The youth, the multiethnic characteristics, and territorial expanse of Russia all make the country an outlier when compared to other countries. Though independent since 1991, Russia has deep historical roots that trace back to Imperial Russia. From Genghis Khan’s great conquers in the thirteenth century (Marks 2009, 36), to the first free presidential elections in the Russian Republic(Marks 2009, 78)—and everything in between, Russia remains a rollercoaster in the modern day. In the manifestation of modern Russia the privileged and corrupt elites, along with the oppressed and disregarded masses greatly influenced the political developments.

He was Russia's dominant political figure since 2000, Vladimir Putin was re elected in 2012 and is still the leader of Russia. Putin ( As people call him) has been president 3 times but, he has been the prime minister twice. He is a 50/50 kind of guy, some people like him some people do not like him. He is a communist ruler, which is an appointed person to make decisions on big decision. People have said that he reminds them of the Russian Czars from long ago. Others love him and say he is changing Russia and changing there life's and old ways, he said he was wishing to change old ways. Like Putin said in this quote "While we understand the group’s behavior was offensive for some, we have concerns about the way these young women were treated

Placing Vladimir Putin accurately on the political spectrum presents several challenges. First, Russia’s political system does not conform to western norms and therefore the standard definitions are not always appropriate. Putin, who spent a career in the KGB, is seen as highly secretive. He does not make frequent public speeches, and in general, Russian leaders do not typically feel the need to explain policy decisions or their rationale to the general populace. This makes it difficult to determine to what degree necessity and practicality motivates Putin’s decisions versus his own political philosophy. The lack of transparency in the Russian system further precludes detailed assessment or evaluation of leaders and their decisions such as would be demanded in western democracies. The Russian state owns 85% of the national media, rendering independent and unbiased scrutiny impossible. For all these reasons, Putin is enigmatic to most of the world outside his own country and therefore determining his personal political philosophy is not an easy task.

In climate of oriental mystery and connivance, which overruns this Government, conceivable outcomes for contorting or harming sources and streams of data are boundless. The very lack of regard of Russians for target truth- - in fact, their doubt in its presence - drives them to view every expressed reality as instruments for advancement of some ulterior reason. There is justifiable reason motivation to suspect that this Government is really a scheme inside of an intrigue; and I for one am hesitant to accept that Stalin himself gets anything like a target picture of outside world. Here there is abundant extension for the sort of unpretentious interest at which Russians are past experts. Powerlessness of outside governments to put their case decisively before Russian approach creators - degree to which they are conveyed up in their relations with Russia to great graces of dark and obscure consultants whom they never see and can't impact - this to my brain is most troubling element of discretion in Moscow, and one which Western statesmen would do well to remember in the event that they would comprehend nature of challenges experienced

The thesis of Nigar Ibrahimova shows how Machiavelli and Vladimir Putin are compared , how Putin exercised virtú in the light of Machiavelli’s doctrines and how he took advantage of this virtú in his politics. An example of how Putin exploits virtú, as stated in the thesis of Ibrahimova is his employment of cruelty to deal with the oligarchs. During the Putin’s terms in presidency, he witnessed how corrupt the corrupt the oligarchs were, causing chaos in Russia. So what he did, while employing cruelty, he charged them with taxes, strip them off their power in media and political parties and finally arrested them, thus eliminating them in the process. In that way, his exercise of virtú was

Once the investigation results were in the newspapers, people became outraged. A lot of citizens did not want to accept that the submarine sank from an old war mine or that it collided with something else. Rumors started that a U.S. submarine came and attacked the Kursk. To make this raging rumor worse, it was also heard that Putin intentionally obscured the occurrence to avoid an intercontinental struggle with the United States. This was a rumor that most of the country believed because they were already wary of Putin. When the sinking happened, most people blamed Putin for the deaths of everyone on board because he took so long to have a search and rescue team go looking for the young soldiers. Based on recoveries, 23 men had survived the attack, help did not come quick enough so the remaining survivors died. This is what society blamed on Putin. So, with the country already so distrustful of their leader, when anecdotes erupted of Putin covering up the United States attack, people were absolutely outraged

Overall, Putin can be described as a charismatic leader with a range of characteristics of a

By Putin’s own admission, he hunted rats for food as a child growing up poor in St. Petersburg, this explains volumes on his personality. Critics might ask how he felt hunting his own relatives in those ghettos, but that would be to axiomatic a parallel to make.

The Romanian-born German Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller recently decried Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship at the concert To Russia with Love which was organized in Berlin to promote human rights in the Russian Federation. The latest pogrom-like riots in Biryulyovo in Moscow suggest that human rights are exotic not only to Vladimir Putin but to some extent to the larger Russian public, and Herta Müller knows perfectly well how this agreement on key values is achieved between the dictator and his subjects. Living under the Ceausescu’s regime, Müller noticed that even children were involved in the state’s ideology. In her essayThe Red Flower and the Rod, she writes, “For two weeks I was a preschool teacher and noticed that even with five-year-olds the imitation of Ceausescu was unmistakable. The