{"id":5366,"count":54,"description":"We have a wide range of interviews recommending books on the history, politics and culture of Russia, and shed light on the reign of its current leader, Vladimir Putin, in power since 1999. For books to understand the Ukraine Russia conflict<\/a> we turned to Harvard history professor Serhii Plokhy. For a recent book on Russia and where it's at, The Return of the Russian Leviathan<\/em> <\/a>by Russian academic Sergei Medvedev\u2014who has already lost his job for writing critical of the current regime\u2014won the 2020 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize<\/a> and is a good place to start.\r\n\r\nLooking back in time we have an excellent interview on Putin and Russian History<\/a> with Edward Lucas, formerly a senior editor at the Economist,<\/em> and now a security analyst. His recommendations include one of the best ever titles for a history book: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway<\/em><\/a>. Our 2011 interview with British academic Simon Pirani on Putin's Russia<\/a> is also an excellent insight into the late Yeltsin years and how Putin consolidated his power in his first decade.\r\n\r\nOn more cultural and literary themes, we have a collection of recommended Russian literature<\/a> (including, among others, the best books on Solzhenitsyn,<\/a> Vladimir Nabokov<\/a> and Fyodor Dostoevsky<\/a>. Rosamund Bartlett chooses the best Russian short stories<\/a>. Books by Leo Tolstoy<\/a> are some of the most frequently recommended on Five Books,<\/em> attesting to the country's role in producing some of the greatest novels ever written.","link":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/category\/world\/asia\/russia\/","name":"Russia","slug":"russia","taxonomy":"category","parent":5616,"meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taxonomies\/category"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/5616"}],"wp:post_type":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts?categories=5366"},{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book?categories=5366"},{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books_like_this?categories=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}