In Russia, It Is Deja-vu All Over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the KGB and Stalin

Those who sneered at Mitt Romney's remarks when he said that "Russia is America's main geopolitical foe," might laugh slightly less after reading Edward Lucas' Deception: How Russia Dupes the West. Political scientists and policymakers who are not interested in anything that occurred more than 50 years ago and are dominated by political correctness will think more clearly about Russia once they read David Satter's It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Really Happened Anyway. And those Western financiers who served as Vladimir Putin's apologists may stop seeing him as a "forgivable pragmatist" once they finish Masha Gessen's The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. All three authors give a short explanation of Russia's immense increase in presidential power, the growth of state bureaucracy, the domination of executive over legislative power, the destruction of the multi-party system, the return to a neo-imperial stance in foreign policy, the disintegrating relationship with the West and intolerance of human rights.