Catherine Belton's Putin's People: A Look Inside the KGB's Rise to Power in Russia and Its Impact on the West

Anthony Levine: Great read. Difficult to remember all the Russian names so take your time.

Highly informative and recommended

United Kingdom on Sep 15, 2023

andrew: An interesting and well researched book, although certain aspects appear to be over emphasised once the meaning has been conveyed and understood.

The author provides an insight into the sheer magnitude of the Russian states involvement, as lead player, into organised crime and corruption (internal and external), to the detriment of normal Russian society, which is staggering and eye wateringly impressive. With the financial institutions of the West shown as greedy and eager opportunists, happy to cash in on the wealth of the country's resources.

Most interesting however, according to the author, are the ongoing covert (some blatant) attempts and successes by the state to undermine and destabilise Western democracies.

United Kingdom on Aug 04, 2023

Harshit Kumawat: The book is remarkable in its details, covering the time period from Putin's spy days in Dresden to 2020 US presidential election. The author gives a comprehensive account of the rise of Putin from a mere spy of KGB to ruthless leader of Russia.
The book tells us about people closest to Putin and how they came to control almost all of the strategic sectors of Russian economy. Once they had everything under their firm control they began using the money from these industries for personal use and also for influence operations in Europe and US.
How Putin came to power after Boris Yeltsin, how he reversed the political changes made during Yeltsin era, how he brought the media and rich businessmen under his control, how he and his secret service agency siphoned billions of dollars from Russia and parked that money in European countries as well as in US, how he maintained and strengthened his grip on power in Russia, how he subverted the judiciary and parliament in Russia, how Russia intervened in US and EU politics. All these questions will be answered after reading this book.
A must read book for people interested in geopolitics and in Russia.

India on Jul 02, 2023

Siriam: This is an excellent book with a great range and depth of understanding on its difficult subject matter of Putin’s rise to power and control of Russia. Belton was the FT correspondent in Moscow during Putin’s rise to assume oligarchic control of Russia with his small group of mainly ex-KGB colleagues, aided by business contacts many of them from criminal backgrounds formed as the USSR collapsed when he moved to St Petersburg to start his post-KGB political career.

Nearly 100 pages of detailed footnotes detailing her sources in support of 500 pages on her subject, reflecting numerous interviews and access to secret documents, show this is not a book of journalistic speculation but a detailed history of what has happened in Russia.

The book is inevitably a dense read. Despite a listing of the main characters as the start like a Russian novel, I still found myself flicking backwards and to the footnotes in keeping track of the many characters involved. I must admit that many of the more complicated transactions discussed especially the moving of illegal funds globally would have benefitted from some simple examples but overall, this is a stunning work of...

United Kingdom on May 22, 2023

Henry Olszowy: This is the most comprehensive analysis of Putin’s career and his motives. If you understand his KGB background and KGB associates, then everything he (they) do is perfectly logical and predictable. They want to restore the Russian empire which includes adjacent countries and territories. To achieve their objectives everything is acceptable including murder, war, thievery, propaganda, and any other action required.

United States on Mar 07, 2023

Brian S.: Putin's People is a fascinating book that follows Vladimir Putin's rise from a KGB officer to a leader with incredible wealth and immense power. Most of the people who helped Putin along were associated with the KGB or Russian organized crime.

The book is well researched, well written, and reasonably readable. The notes are excellent, but there's not a bibliography.

United States on Dec 01, 2022

Michael Griswold: Putin’s People tells the decades long story of how the security services and government friendly Oligarchs usurped any meaningful attempts at democracy and instead created a state where corruption and parasitic behavior became the norm and any hopes for a democratic Russia went flying out the window. It was a state built on the back of false realities to a great extent.

While the Soviet Union was descending into chaos of failed reforms, economic ruin, and political turmoil, men within the Soviet Security Services were grabbing the machinery of underlying power within the Soviet state and waiting for the moment to strike. These folks were very adept in cultivating relationships turning from law-and-order communists, to democrats, to super capitalists whatever the political winds in Russia were at the moment.

The authors go through in great detail as to how these networks were set up to enrich these security men and make them the ultimate benefactors of a hallowed out, shadowy, Russian economy, so they became very wealthy. They also could position themselves as the indispensable men of the Russian state, even as they peddled a false narrative of the Soviet Union that...

United States on May 04, 2021

Rita J. Newhouse: Putin's People by Catherine Belton
Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
by Catherine Belton

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RJ Newhouse's review
Feb 01, 2021 · edit

really liked it

So many details, so many Russian names ! A little hard to keep them all straight, but then, it is named Putin's PEOPLE.Putin pushed to the fore to replace Yeltsin so the communists would not again take power, a move later regretted when it became obvious that the new oligarchs from the end of the Soviet Union became replaced by new ones belonging to the KGB in cahoots with Russia's top crime bosses, all condoned but always denied by Putin. Money was laundered thru shell companies, newly formed banks and used in the Western NATO countries to undermine governments, politicians and bring them under the sway of Putin's Russia, a system set up by the KGB during the Soviet Union and maintained after its demise. In America, the Russian mafia, all associated with the above , hung out at Trump's casino, The Taj Mahal. Russians would take the laundered money, make plans to build luxurious hotels, apt. bldgs. and then, pay trump millions of dollars just to have the...

United States on Feb 01, 2021

MAC: I remember reading John Gray’s ‘False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism’ (Granta, London, 1998) and what he described as Russian ‘anarcho-capitalism’ in Chapter 6 as a result of the chaos caused by the hard economic medicine the West (particularly the U.S.) inflicted on Russia with the fall of communism.

Gray was appalled then by the rise of the oligarchs and social disorder endured by ordinary Russians – enough to seriously question Western free market ideology.

I wonder what he would make of Ms Belton’s description, now.

Would Gray have foreseen how nationalist KGB stalwarts have morphed into the new but also enduring rulers of the modern Russian capitalist state?

Because it seems to me reading this book, that all Gray’s worries have come true and more so.

Having just finished this important book, I have been dazzled by the sheer resourcefulness of the writer as a researcher, the simply huge amounts of money being bandied about as well as the characters with their unfamiliar Eurasian names.

If Belton’s book gets close to how things are really working in Russia then it is fair to say that it’s a shame – a...

United Kingdom on Oct 24, 2020

B. Robinson: PUTIN’S PEOPLE
By Catherine Belton
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
500 pages of text, 32 illustrations, 96 pages of defining notes, 35.00 USD

Reviewed by Ben Robinson

In 1990 two things happened on Earth. The Gorbachev 80’s came to a crashing halt, and Donald Trump was visited by Russian gangsters who partied with him at 3am in Atlantic City at his Taj Mahal casino which he claimed to spend over one billion dollars on. Apparently the NJ Gaming Commission was therefore completely surprised when this self-styled billionaire (he wasn’t), was suddenly facing bankruptcy and many violations for not reporting transactions by one person for more than $10,000 in one 24-hour period. Russian pop stars filled the gaudy Taj halls with people who’d spend $100,000 in less than a weekend. Don’s place became the place to party with oligarchs looking to spend a weekend sacrificing virgins with no questions asked about the dead fourteen-year-old in the tight dress in a dumpster. “What do you care? She was a hooker!” those arrested and then let go were heard to say. Welcome to Trump nightlife 90’s style. The Russian lock step to dominating America was only...

United States on Sep 02, 2020