Fragile Empire
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How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin
Ben Judah
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Format: ClothPrice: $40.00
Out of Print
"This is a rich and powerful book" - Tony Brenton, Standpoint, 1st June 2013
"Having worked as a Reuters reporter, a think-tank analyst and a freelance journalist, Judah has the skills to prep the dirty ingredients of Russian politics and cook up a narrative feast." Oliver Bullough, Literary Review, 1st June 2013
"Judah’s portrait of Putin’s fragile empire is analytical, historically informed and wise. He shares his glancing impressions lavishly, and does not conceal his sadness and disgust." - Rachel Polonsky, Evening Standard, 30th May 2013
"Ben Judah, a young freelance writer, paints a more journalistic – and more passionate – picture in ‘Fragile Empire’. He shuttles to and fro across Russia’s vast terrain, finding criminals, liars, fascists and crooked politicians, as well as the occasional saintly figure." - The Economist, 9th May 2013
"Judah has travelled far and wide. He’s talked to men and women in all walks of life – and, what’s more, he’s listened. There’s a real freshness and vividness to his reportage, a real conviction in his analysis of a society in which daily life is an endless round of disappointment and frustration." - Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman, 18th May 2013
"A beautifully written and very lively study of Russia that argues that the political order created by Vladimir Putin is stagnating – undermined by corruption and a failure to modernise economically. Judah’s reporting stretches from the Kremlin to Siberia and has a clear moral sense, without being preachy." - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 29th June 2013
"Judah is an intrepid reporter and classy political scientist [...] His lively account of his remote adventures forms the most enjoyable part of Fragile Empire, and puts me in mind of Chekhov's famous 1890 journey to Sakhalin Island [...] In Birobidzhan, close to the Chinese border, Judah finds the Chinese are already farming Russian land. The Slavic locals live in squalor. He meets two women selling mushrooms by the side of the road, one with a face "so riven by wrinkles it looks like cracked mud on the bottom of a dry lake". A local teenage girl tells him: "Who gives a fuck about the motherland. There is no fucking motherland." Luke Harding, The Guardian, 27th June 2013
“Nothing in Vladimir Putin’s early life marked him out as a future president. A rough childhood in postwar Leningrad led to an undistinguished career as a KGB agent. Yet as journalist Ben Judah shows in this detailed and impressive account of Putin’s years in office, it was his very ‘greyness’ that enabled him to succeed in the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”—Ian Critchley, The Sunday Times
“Judah’s outstanding Fragile Empire travels up and down the curve of Putin’s popularity. . .This is a familiar narrative but Judah, only in his mid-twenties, explains it all with economy and panache. . .What makes Fragile Empire important, however, is its dissection of Putin’s decline in popularity in 2008. It is the first to tell the story not just of the Moscow protest movement but of the less visible, but no less real, dissatisfaction beyond the capital.”—Neil Buckley, Financial Times
Publication Date: June 18, 2013
20 b/w illus.
