Death Of A Dissident by Alexander Goldfarb

From The Week of October 11, 2009

Though
Alexander Goldfarb's account of the
poisoning, in London, of
Alexander Litvinenko, an agent of the Russian security services turned outspoken critic of the regime of Vladimir Putin, can claim little by way of journalistic neutrality -- the book is co-authored with Litvinenko's widow --, Mr. Goldfarb's account of how a loyal soldier in post-Soviet Russia was converted into a man willing to sell his country's secrets to, first, the US and, then, the UK is gripping and chilling. Thanks to Mr. Goldfarb's able writing, Death of a Dissident is more than just a modern spy story, shot through with juicy, clandestine meetings in Turkish and London hotels and consulates. This book is fundamentally about mother Russia, her history, her foibles, her people and her inability to embrace true democracy.

Mr. Goldfarb gives us a crash course on the privatization of Russian businesses after the fall of Communism and how this created uber wealthy
Russian oligarchs who held in their hands the fate of more than 100 million people. He chronicles how the rise of authoritarian capitalism, combined with a bygones-be-bygones approach to the crimes of the Soviet past, created a dangerous culture in which well-networked men, men connected to the Russian Mafia and to the one-time KGB, flourished in the new Russia, grabbing for themselves that piece of the pie not readily accessible to the common man.

While the book hobnobs with billionaires like George Soros and Boris Berezovsky, men who do not lack for opinions on the new Russia, it's little Alexander Litvinenko, a middle man in the security services, who exemplifies Putin's Russia. He is killed in a shockingly unsubtle, shockingly brutal way. Why? To send a message, that the new Russia does not tolerate dissent, that the new Russia does not tolerate treason, and only new Russia is the decider of what is dissent and what is treason. These issues and more are investigated in Death of a dissident. And though we can recognize that the answers may be slanted, Mr. Goldfarb, a trained scientist, lays out his case convincingly and disturbingly. For if he is right, then the world will soon have to confront the fact that Russia is a very new kind of beast with whom we all must soon reckon. (4/5 Stars)