Winter is Coming (45 page)

caused more damage to the Russian government than her writings
. A remark Putin made to the press in Germany on October 10, 2006, four days after Politkovskaya’s murder.

dizzy with the smell of oil and gas!
Vaclav Havel, quoted widely at the time after the event and cited in the film’s press kit.

highest quality in the world
. All quotes are from press coverage of Medvedev’s statements at the World Russian Press Congress in Moscow on June 11, 2008.

Russian cities as well as on foreign soil.
The 2009 murder of Kadyrov rival Sulim Yamadayev in Dubai being the most sensational. Dubai police accused Kadyrov’s cousin (and state Duma member) of the murder. Yamadayev’s brother Ruslan was killed in Moscow in 2008.

if NATO had approved Georgia’s MAP [Membership Application Plan] application.
Bush,
Decision Points,
7945-7947.

CHAPTER 9:THE AUDACITY OF FALSE HOPE

with Marshall and Acheson and Kennan.
Said by Obama during an interview on
Fareed Zakaria GPS
, December 28, 2008. Obama went on to praise the foreign policy of President George H. W. Bush.

in all lands, everywhere
. A version of this appears on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

inspiring rhetoric with decisive action.
In my November 5, 2008, op-ed for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and published widely. Full text available here with no paywall: http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/11/05/kasparov-on-obama-and-how-russia-sees-america/.

condemn Russia’s “aggressive action .”
All quotes from campaign press releases, which came out at a furious pace.

American exceptionalism projected by President Bush’s first term.
Ben Smith, “‘Invasion of Georgia’ a ‘3
a.m.
moment,’”
Politico,
August 9, 2008.

the independence of former Soviet Republics.
Senator McCain’s entire August 11, 2008, statement on Georgia is worth reading: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/mccain_statement_on_ georgia.html.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev should decide.
Interview with Igor Yurgens at Gazeta.ru, February 2010.

memorably referring to BP as “Bolshoi Petroleum
.” Quoted widely in the press, January 14, 2011. Representative Markey was the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee at the time.

policy toward Russia has been: “We give, Russia gets.”
Mitt Romney, “Bowing to the Kremlin,”
Politico,
March 27, 2012.

dismissed his claims as political bluster
. Mitt Romney,
No Apology: The Case for American Greatness
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010), Kindle edition, locations 4916-20.

docile people and they were attacked unfairly.
Transcript of the
Fox News
video clip that’s still available online: http://video.foxnews.com/v/1624799524001/anti-putin-rallies-continue-in-russia/?#sp =show-clips.

CHAPTER
10
: WAR AND APPEASEMENT

Rotenberg alone received $7.4 billion in contracts.
“Castles in the Sand,”
Economist,
July 13, 2013.

Tokyo in 1940 and Rome in 1944.
They were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II. The next Olympic Games were in London in 1948.

a piece of Putin’s neo-USSR
. Garry Kasparov, “Les Jeux et la verite,”
Le Monde,
February 24, 2014.

before I’d finished saying the word “Berlin.”
My aide Mig Greengard started calling this “the Hitler eye roll” during my many interviews before and during Sochi. He also noted that the eye rolls over these comparisons mostly stopped after Putin annexed Crimea as I’d warned he would.

“It’s not meant in a personal way.
"John Kerry press conference in London, March 14, 2014.

wishes about “mobilizing the international community."
Obama actually said this (“Remarks by President Obama and President Poroshenko of Ukraine After Bilateral Meeting,” September 18, 2014). Many of his remarks look like a parody of diplomatic doubletalk: “And we are going to continue to seek to mobilize the international community to say to Russia that Ukraine desires to have a good relationship with all of its neighbors, both East and West, and that there should be a way in which Ukraine is able to negotiate and trade, and continue the people-to-people links between Ukraine and Russia, but that Russia cannot dictate to them their ability to work effectively with other partners in order to better the situation for the Ukrainian people.” Russia had just invaded Ukraine!

CONCLUSION

KimJong-il and those similar to him understand.
Vaclav Havel, “Time to 
Act on N. Korea,”
Washington Post,
June 18, 2004.

calling the murder a “provocation."
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, 
expressed this just hours after the murder. Putin repeated it the next 
day.

justice that seemed further away all the time.
The entire 2011 Nemtsov report “Putin.Corruption” is available online in Russian and English at http://www.nemtsov.ru/old.phtml?id=706613. Thousands of printed copies were seized and destroyed as “extremist literature,” of course.

not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel.
Actually titled “Sinews of Peace,” it’s simply known as the “Iron Curtain Speech” forevermore. It’s worth reading, or hearing, in full if only to marvel at how Churchill, famous for soaring rhetoric, was also keen to discuss an array of details and policy in his speeches. Text and audio here: http://www
.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman /the-sinews-of-peace.

the wine and the wineskins will be ruined.
Mark 2:22 (New International Version).

“wake me up when they take Poland"
As actually said to me by Bill Maher on his show
Real Time
on May 1, 2015.

Garry Kasparov
spent twenty years as the world’s number-one- ranked chess player. In 2005, he retired from professional chess to help lead the pro-democracy opposition against Vladimir Putin. In 2012, he was named chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Vaclav Havel. He has been a contributing editor to the
Wall Street Journal
since 1991, and he is a senior visiting fellow at the Oxford-Martin School. His 2007 book,
How Life Imitates Chess,
has been published in twenty-six languages. He lives in self-imposed exile in New York with his wife, Dasha, and their children.

PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

I. F. S
tone
, proprietor of
I. F. Stone’s Weekly,
combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published
The Trial of Socrates,
which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

B
enjamin
C. B
radlee
was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of
The Washington Post.
It was Ben who gave the
Post
the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, bestselling books.

R
obert
L. B
ernstein
, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by
The Washington Post
as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

Peter Osnos,
Founder and Editor-at-Large