The Kremlin Conspiracy

Although the Cold War conventionally ended in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there is renewed interest and concern in the West about our relations with a resurgent Russia. Arguably the Cold War was just one manifestation of an ages-old geopolitical conflict between Russia and other world powers. Russian-speaking Kremlin-watcher Douglas Boyd starts by tracing Russia's growth through centuries of hot wars of conquest that expanded the tiny principality of Muscovy to an empire straddling Europe and Asia. Its expansionism was evident throughout the last century, often conducted by proxy during the Cold War. With enormous reserves of energy and natural resources on which other nations are increasingly reliant, Putin's Russia is once again flexing its muscles. This powerful book begins with an account of the author's imprisonment in a Stasi interrogation centre in East Germany. Told in a strong narrative style intermingling historical events with first-person quotes of the principal participants, "The Kremlin Conspiracy" puts it all into perspective, showing that the energy war launched by Medvedev/Putin is just the latest phase in 1,000 years of Russian expansionism. Events are often recounted in the actual words of participants - a technique the author has used before - spies and spy-catchers, generals, National Servicemen intelligence-gathering in Berlin and slipping across the Baltic by night on ex-Kriegsmarine MTBs, the US and British nuclear submarine commanders who played chicken with Soviet 'boomers,' the pilots like Gary Powers who flew into Soviet airspace to test radar and on photographic over-flights - they all have a say. But so too do politicians, journalists, history teachers and schoolchildren, not forgetting the women of Greenham Common. The implosion of the USSR in 1989-1991 was not a victory for the West, but due to the impossibility for Soviet central planning and one-party government to adapt to the economic realities of the approaching 21st century. With Putin's new-style economy having leap-frogged all that, the Hot and Cold War is on again, with Russia more powerful than ever. That is Boyd's alarming message.