IN PUTIN'S FOOTSTEPS

Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones

Nina KhrushchevaProfessor of International Affairs, The New School, New York; Senior Fellow, Bruno Kreisky Forum

in conversation with:

Steven Lee Myersauthor and Beijing national security correspondent, formerly Moscow and Baghdad bureau chief, The New York Times

In 2000, after Vladimir Putin was handed the Russian presidency by Boris Yeltsin and then won it himself in a landslide election, he set out on a massive political campaign with the intent to restore his country's lost status as a great power. He travelled around the world to nearly two dozen countries and almost a quarter of Russia's own 89 regions. Inspired by his nation's enormity, its ‘limitless land,‘ Putin aimed to follow it up by travelling to every one of Russia's eleven time zones on New Year's Eve to deliver a speech in all of them at the stroke of midnight. The idea was grand, but unattainable. If Putin were a Santa Clause he could have flown on a magic sleigh, but due to the country's enormous size travelling on an airplane in one night would get you only through half of it.
Nearly twenty years later, Nina Khrushcheva and journalist Jeffrey Tayler set out to travel in what would have been Putin's footsteps. Focusing on a town in each time zone, and examining how factors from politics to natural resources define each, the two create a portrait of the country, and in doing so measure the success of Putin's presidency.
To discuss her cross country journey and the Kremlin politics of size, Nina Khrushcheva will be joined by Steven Lee Myers, author of the highly acclaimed biography of Vladimir Putin, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.

Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler
In Putin's Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones
St Martin's Press (February 19, 2019), ISBN 978-1-250-16323-3