Putin

“runs on paperwork”: Shvets, Washington Station, p. 27.

“Our work”: Usoltsev, Sosluzhivets, p. 24.

“Putin’s biggest success”: Masha Gessen, The Man Without a Face (New York: Riverhead, 2012), p. 66.

“Of course I did not”: Earley, Comrade J, p. 330.

“Probably”: Putin, First Person, p. 67.

“entirely correct”: Ibid., p. 74.

“I was a senior”: Ibid., p. 72.

“Lord Paperwork”: Shvets, Washington Station, p. 25.

“lived in total harmony”: Putin, First Person, p. 61.

“always submitted”: This and other Lyudmila Putin quotes are in my translation from Oleg Blotsky, Vladimir Putin: Istoriya zhizni (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Mezhdunarodniye otnosheniya, 2002). No page numbers because the section was from an online post. Apparently the book was published in English that same year as Vladimir Putin: The Road to Power.

“hellish”: Usoltsev, Sosluzhivets, p. 53.

“Don’t forget”: Ibid., p. 185.

“natural element”: Ibid., p. 166.

“if there’s a holiday”: Ibid., p. 201.

“We destroyed”: Putin, First Person, p. 76.

“We were forced”: Ibid., p. 78.

“We cannot do anything”: Ibid., p. 79.

“That business of”: Ibid.

PART THREE: ASCENT

“The lowest card”: Baltasar Gracián, The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Summer 2016), p. 171.

CHAPTER 4: RUSSIA’S FALL, PUTIN’S RISE

“Blaming Russia”: Jakub Korejba, “Democracy? No Thanks!”; New Eastern Europe, January–March 2013.

“were put in place”: Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), p. 28.

“I was happy”: Putin, First Person, pp. 86–87.

“there was no future”: Ibid., p. 85.

“had lost touch”: Ibid., p. 87.

“Screw it”: Ibid., p. 88.

“knew that it was wiser”: Gessen, The Man Without a Face, p. 97.

“Igor, I want”: Putin, First Person, p. 92.

“a beautiful but dangerous” and “As soon as the barbed wire”: from Quora interview “What Are Putin’s Views on Communism?” www.quora.com.

“He was utterly”: John Lloyd, “The Logic of Vladimir Putin,” New York Times, March 19, 2000.

“preserving the Soviet Union”: Putin, First Person, p. 93.

“Speaking from the steps”: Obituary in the Economist, February 24, 2000.

“Once I saw the faces”: Putin, First Person, p. 93.

“They were nearly all kikes”: Richard Lourie, “Window on Russia,” Boston Phoenix, October 18, 1991.

“We are so happy”: Ibid.

“décor of laws”: Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (New York: Perennial Library, 1970), p. 23.

“most hated”: C. J. Chivers and Erin E. Arvedlund, “Head of Russian Electricity Monopoly Survives Ambush,” New York Times, March 3, 2005.

“architect of the largest transfer”: David Hoffman, The Oligarchs (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 5.

“I hate the Soviet system”: TASS, Politika, June 16, 2015, tass.ru/ronika/2042091.

“pristinely empty”: Hoffman, The Oligarchs, p. 184.

“Why should they”: Ibid., p. 183.

“In Sophia”: Richard Lourie, “Pride and Prices,” Boston Phoenix, January 3, 1992.

“The schools now serve”: Ibid.

“Russia and the whole world”: Leon Aron, Yeltsin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 317.

“With a cigarette dangling”: Gessen, The Man Without a Face, p. 81.

“Judge his success”: John Lloyd, “The Logic of Vladimir Putin,” New York Times, March 19, 2000.

“I found him great”: Ibid.

“not radically more serious”: Gessen, The Man Without a Face, p. 124.

“And what was absolutely surprising”: Baker and Glasser, Kremlin Rising, p. 52.