{"id":615,"date":"2012-04-03T20:07:10","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T20:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/?p=615"},"modified":"2012-04-03T20:07:10","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T20:07:10","slug":"enrichment-opportunity-the-man-without-a-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/2012\/04\/03\/enrichment-opportunity-the-man-without-a-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Enrichment opportunity &#8211; &#8220;The Man Without A Face&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/files\/2012\/04\/The-Man-without-a-Face-The-U.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-616\" src=\"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/files\/2012\/04\/The-Man-without-a-Face-The-U-140x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"140\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>I am presently reading <strong>Masha Gessen&#8217;s<\/strong> horrifying and damming biography of Vladimir Putin &#8211; <strong>&#8220;The Man Without A Face&#8221;<\/strong>.\u00a0 She describes him as a &#8220;<em>small and vengeful man, prone to furious vendettas, fond of helping himself to other people&#8217;s property, and the godfather of a mafia clan ruling the country&#8221;. <\/em>There is a good review of the book from The Guardian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2012\/mar\/09\/man-without-face-gessen-review\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst I do not know enough above post-Soviet Russian politics to make really informed comment on some of the accusations in it, I would make this point in relation to our course. As things stand\u00a0in 2012, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Yelstin years of the 1990s\u00a0can be seen as \u00a0just another &#8220;moment of reform&#8221; akin to the Emancipation, the October Manifesto or the N.E.P.\u00a0Perhaps\u00a0absolutism is Russia&#8217;s usual form of government. As Birdiev said of Stalin, &#8220;<em>all the past is repeating itself, and acts only behind new masks<\/em>&#8220;.\u00a0Perhaps&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Kydd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am presently reading Masha Gessen&#8217;s horrifying and damming biography of Vladimir Putin &#8211; &#8220;The Man Without A Face&#8221;.\u00a0 She describes him as a &#8220;small and vengeful man, prone to furious vendettas, fond of helping himself to other people&#8217;s property, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/2012\/04\/03\/enrichment-opportunity-the-man-without-a-face\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}