PUTIN'S LABYRINTH

摘要

In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, an all-but-unknown former KGB officer, as his successor. Putin imposed a discipline on Russia that had been absent since the Soviet Union's collapse, and he ushered in the beginnings of prosperity thanks in large part to a spike in global oilprices. But he also became one of Washington's harshest critics abroad and an autocratic ruler at home whose enemies often met with violent deaths. BusinessWeek correspondent Steve LeVine, in this excerpt from his new book, Putin's Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia, unravels some mysteries of the Putin presidency.