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War and Punishment
- The Story of Russian Oppression and Ukrainian Resistance
- Narrated by: Richard Attlee
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
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Summary
'History is made up of myths,' writes the renowned Russian dissident journalist Mikhail Zygar. 'Alas, our myths led us to the fascism of 2022. It is time to expose them.
Drawing from his perilous career investigating the frontiers of the Russian empire, Zygar reveals how 350 years of propaganda, bad historical scholarship, folk tales and fantasy spurred his nation into war with Ukraine.
How did a German monk's fear of the Ottoman Empire drive him to invent the fiction of a united Russian world? How did corny spy novels about a 'Soviet James Bond' inspire Vladimir Putin to join the KGB? How did Alexander Pushkin's admiration for a poem by Lord Byron end with him slandering the legendary chief of the Cossacks? And how did Putin underestimate a rising TV comic named Volodymyr Zelensky, failing to see that his satire had become deadly serious, and that his country would be a joke no longer?
A noted expert on the Kremlin with unparalleled access to hundreds of players in the current conflict - from politicians to oligarchs, gangsters to comedians (not least Zelensky himself) - Zygar chronicles the power struggles from which today's politics grew, and digs out the essential truths from behind layers of seductive legend. By surveying the strange, complex record of Russo-Ukrainian relations, War and Punishment reveals exactly how the largest nation on Earth lost its senses. A work of history can't undo the past or transform the present, but sometimes it can shape the future.
In fact, that's how the story begins.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
"Knowing he could always follow many colleagues and activists into jail, hospital, or into the graveyard, Zygar persists" (Christiane Amanpour)
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- S. C. Bethell
- 20-08-23
Chilling reality
A truly outstanding account of recent events in Ukraine starting from
17th century. It’s excellently produced and narrated , one of the best in my short Audible membership . But it’s chilling , so much skullduggery delusion and corruption , and Putin !!’
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- nikolaj lynge
- 11-04-24
What I also understood too late
The books central point, Russian colonial thought, is too often lost in other sources and popular literature.
Highly recommended if you want a perspective on why Russia acts as it does, especially in the FSU
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- NADYA D
- 07-02-24
very good
I highly recommend this book, it's easy informative , personal and very honest. The author is brilliant ad always
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- Andriy Supranonok
- 02-10-23
Absolute must read and listen
If you want to know Ukrainian-Russian history in a nutshell, you can listen only to this book and nothing else. Being a history junky it's hard for me to think of a more concise book that is so compact and broad at the same time. The narrator is brilliant. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
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