Putin’s Cold New World

Is Russia somehow different from other powerful nations? For Westerners, it has generally been an unpredictable country, and therefore an interesting one for travelers and scholars. Books by intellectuals who have traveled there and promised to explain its peculiarities are a well-established tradition. Such texts have been written by, among others, Denis Diderot, Madame de Staël, Adolphe de Custine, John Reed, Anatole France, André Gide, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre.