Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 In 1999, Boris Yeltsin, Russia's president, was very ill. He had suffered several heart attacks and had undergone open-heart surgery soon after he was elected for a second term in 1996. He was not half the politician he had been, and his popularity rating was dipping into the single digits. #2 After the fall of communism in Russia, the country was battered, traumatized, and disappointed. The Yeltsin government made the grave mistake of not addressing the country's pain and fear. The people sought solace in nostalgia, and many were blinded by hurt and aggression. #3 The government seemed incapable of convincing the people that things were better than they had been a couple of years earlier, and certainly better than a decade ago. The only thing the people wanted was someone to prosecute Yeltsin and the Family. #4 Putin and Berezovsky began to see each other more frequently in 1996, when Putin moved to Moscow to take an administrative job at the Kremlin. By 1999, Berezovsky was a man under siege, and he had become something of a pariah

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