Russia Explained, and It’s Not a Pretty Picture

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If you have ever had the feeling that we never quite get the whole truth about Russia, Edward Lucas, in his new book, will explain why you have that feeling. Supposedly Russia is a democratic, market-driven capitalistic society, yet the country never makes any news other than when it’s shutting off gas supplies to Western Europe. Brazil makes business news. So do China and India. Those countries are making the world a more productive place. Russia, on the other hand, declares itself to be an economic power, but as you will learn in Lucas’s Deception: Spies, Lies and How Russia Dupes the West, Russia verges on being nothing but a huge criminal organization.

While he’s painting a horrific picture of Russia, Lucas also gives a detailed accounting of the espionage business. “Outsiders catch only fleeting glimpses of life in the shadows,” Lucas writes. His book takes readers into the shadows where almost comical ineptitude mixes with harrowing accounts of spies who met their ends at the hands of the Russian intelligence agencies.

In essence, Russia dupes the West because the West is full of open societies that value human rights. No state security agents watch every foreigner’s every move, and while the odd traitor to the United States gets executed on occasion, no American traitor ever got caught, wired to a gurney and then rolled into a furnace alive and wide awake.

Russia is a paranoid, xenophobic and ruthless place where the government, private enterprise and criminal enterprise have all swizzled together, Lucas explains. He tells the story of Sergei Magnitsky, who discovered that government officials had stolen $230 million from the Russian treasury. For his efforts, Magnitsky winds up suffering – I mean suffering in the most extreme sense of the word – at the hands of the Russian criminal, entrepreneurial authorities.

He dies of heart failure, though “A fairer assessment would have been death by torture,” Lucas writes.

Western countries have never had much luck conducting espionage operations in Russia. Western attempts to spy on the new Soviet Union after World War I met with failure. After the Second World War, western governments again failed to get any spies into Russia and they pretty much have given up ever since.

Spying in contemporary Russia is as difficult as it has ever been. Nosy journalists face violence or death. Russia intimidates Western governments. In his quest for information, Lucas was turned down by a knowledgeable official who said that he’d love to help but couldn’t because the Russians would find out. “And they will take it as a declaration of war,” the source told Lucas.

Lucas packs a staggering amount of information into his book, and one must marvel at his ability to keep it all straight. The story of Sergei Magnitsky alone is fantastically complicated, and it is but one chapter. As a reader, keeping up with the stories requires some effort. If you’re looking for a breezy read to enjoy by the pool, this may not be the book for you. But if you’re genuinely interested in spies and espionage and the interactions between Russia and the West, it’d be a tragedy to leave this book unread. займ на карту срочно без отказа hairy girl zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php займ онлайн на карту без отказа