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Title: The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy by Strobe Talbott ISBN: 0812968468 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78
Rating: 4
Summary: a very useful and well-written book containing many insights
Comment: Contrary to several other reviewers on this site who are rather critical, I found this a very useful and insightful book. The fact that it hardly deals with the rise of the oligarchs and other important Russian domestic items is in my view not relevant as this is a book mainly on Russian-US relations in the 1990s. Talbott writes lucid prose and is often entertaining. One gets a good impression of the endless diplomatic wheeling and dealing behind the scenes with the Russians. Talbott gives a very interesting account of his direct relationship with the Russian official Yuri Mamedov, who served as his personal contact at the Russian foreign ministry. The wounded pride of the Russians, basically due to the collapse of the old Soviet empire, was so great that all kinds of irritations about Yugoslavia and Kosovo, NATO enlargement and other issues were basically inevitable, Talbott suggests between the lines. Amazing that things went so well between Russia and the US in this period of great difficulty for Yeltsin on the Russian domestic front. Boris Yeltsin comes through as an unpredictable politician with a drinking problem which was much bigger apparently than I suspected from reading other written accounts of the 1990s. During summits with the Russians, Clinton and his team were always counting the number of drinks Yeltsin gulped down and were often trying in vain to keep the hard liquor out of reach of the Russian president. When the summit was on American soil, that is. In Russia they didn't have this possibility, of course. Talbott writes with a great knowledge of Russian history and a love of the country, but is in no way uncritical of the mess Yeltsin and his team often made in the realm of foreign policy as well. Witness the unexpected transfer of Russian troops from Bosnia to Pristina at the end of the Kosovo crisis in 1999, which as Talbott pictures it, was a clear example of messy and irresponsible Russian decision making. Still, Talbott rightly suggests that Yeltsin as president was definitely preferable to a communist fossil like Zyuganov.
Rating: 2
Summary: Interesting but aimless
Comment: I have gotten nothing out of reading this book. I am currently a student interested in diplomatic relations having some experience working in the White House and expected a down and dirty book about behind the scenes presidential diplomacy. I read nothing of the sort.
This book bounces from issue to issue, following events as far as dates rather than consolidating the efforts of the president and Talbot into subject by subject chapters.
I was also lost with names. He floods the reader with Russian names, mentioning there titles once or twice in the entire piece. This makes for very hard reading when trying to make sense of the various Vladmirs.
Nothing can be truly learned from the book and would be much better suited to a Tom Clancy reader who is not expecting a plot.
Rating: 1
Summary: Skips the delicate questions
Comment: Strobe Talbott's latest book does not add much to the understanding of Russia or the role played by the Clinton administration (of which Talbott was its most senior Russia hand) towards that country.
Talbott will not be remembered by the Sovietological community for those things he describes in his book, which seem superfluous and self-glorifying. He will be mostly remembered for three events. The first is the billions of dollars wasted of U.S. aid money that he personally oversaw to Russia. The government of Viktor Chernomyrdin (whose personal fortune is estimated at over 10 billion dollars) squandered much U.S. aid money yet Talbott ignored the many warning signs and continued to advocate lending and aid to the Chernomyrdin government with the excuse that Russia is too big to lose.
Second, Talbott will be remembered for the disdainful way in which he treated the genuine Russian democrats that could have given that country a chance, while assisting former communist officials. Talbott famously under-cut the Russian reformers in 1993 when he quipped that "Russia needs more therapy and less shock," referring to the program of "shock therapy" that the reform-minded finance minister Fyodorov was trying to implement. Fyodorov later mentioned that Talbott had "stabbed us in the back." Later that year, the head of the largest pro-democracy movement in Russia, Galina Starovoitova, pleaded with Talbott for assistance in convincing a foreign TV star popular in Russia, to appear in commercials to help the democrats in the December 1993 parliamentary elections. Talbott refused to even return her calls. However, both the U.S. ambassador in Belarus (David Swartz) and the democratic leader of that country at that time (Stanislau Shushkevich) accused Talbott of using U.S. aid to help communist politicians there.
The third event that makes Talbott memorable are the widespread suspicions and accusations of his prior involvement with Soviet state security, the KGB. Some suspect that Talbott may have collaborated with the KGB to portray the USSR in a favorable light as Time Magazine correspondent (which he did) in exchange for access (which he had). Talbott was evasive in his confirmation hearings at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the specific issue of his contacts and relation with a KGB agent named Louie.
These three events are not explored in his self-glorifying book, which is why those seeking to understand those tumultuous times read instead some other book, such as the account by former ambassador Jack Matlock.
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Title: The Oligarchs: Wealth & Power in the New Russia by David E. Hoffman, David Hoffman ISBN: 1586480014 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 19 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone by Joseph S. Nye Jr. ISBN: 0195150880 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down by Rodric Braithwaite ISBN: 0300094965 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman ISBN: 0393051447 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Putin's Russia by Lilia Shevtsova, Liliia Fedorovna Shevtsova ISBN: 0870032011 Publisher: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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