The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

When Vladimir Putin, an unimportant, low-level KGB operative, was rushed to power by a group of Oligarchs in 1999, he was a man without a history. Within a few brief years, Putin had dismantled the countrys media, wrested control and wealth from the countrys burgeoning business class, and decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Virtually every obstacle to his unbridled control was removed and every opposing voice silenced, with political rivals and critics driven into exile or to the grave. Drawing on information and sources no other writer has tapped, Masha Gessens fearless account charts Putins rise from the boy who had scrapped his way through post-war Leningrad schoolyards, to the faceless man who manoeuvred his way into absolute – and absolutely corrupt – power.