On succeeding — and compromising — in Putin’s Russia
Christina Spencer
Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia By Joshua Yaffa January 2020 Tim Duggan Books, Penguin Random House 368 pages Kindle $17 Hardcover: $36.63 Paperback: $16.55
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Elizaveta Glinka, shown here with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was known as “Dr. Liza.” She was a medical professional who reintroduced the notion of charitable acts to a populace that had relied on the state for its needs over decades. Her story ended tragically, however.
backers. She persuaded the government to allow Chechen wives and daughters who had gone to Iraq and Syria with their ISIS families to come home. Despite the fact her own people, and her homeland, had been targets of Russian brutality for years, she would greet the returnees at the airport with a smile and a sign: “We thank Putin for our children.” Saratova
was frank about this personally painful image: “I imagine if I didn’t do this, there wouldn’t be a next round of women and children coming home.” Saratova’s story is among author Joshua Yaffa’s examples of how those subject to the power of Putin cope. The book isn’t about Putin directly; more interestingly, it is about the kinds of people who SUMMER 2020 | JUL-AUG-SEPT
KREMLIN.RU
In 1999, Heda Saratova and her young child huddled, terrified, in their apartment in Grozny, Chechnya, as Russian troops battered the capital of the rebellious republic. The city had been torn apart, buildings razed, supplies cut off, residents forced to dodge shells daily. Trapped like every other civilian, Saratova knew that among the helpless were elderly, often frail women. She set out each day, somehow evading sniper fire, to find provisions for them and herself. Eventually, Saratova began to also document the atrocities and ongoing human rights violations by Russian soldiers in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Such acts of bravery — Saratova was constantly travelling through the war zone to gather evidence of Russia’s “cleansing operations” — transformed her into a full-fledged human rights activist. Then a close colleague was murdered, and her own children were threatened. She bought tickets to Moscow and sheltered there for nearly a year. On her return to Chechnya, Saratova was a different person, deciding that “I would have to change the style of my work, maybe even change myself.” So began an activism of compromise, in which she backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Chechen ally now running the republic, in exchange for help in blunting some of the worst abuses that continued to occur. She cultivated ties with highranking police, military officers and Putin
