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Revision as of 04:49, 5 May 2009 by Hodja Nasreddin (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)David Satter (born in 1947 in Chicago) is an American journalist who wrote books about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia.
Life and career
David Satter graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and, from 1976 to 1982, as Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times. He then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal. He is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Jamestown Foundation, and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His books
"Age of Delirium" and "Darkness at Dawn"
David Satter made his name writing the non-fiction books Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (1996) and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (2003), which describe two consecutive periods of modern Russian history. The first book begins with a quotation from the Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev who wrote in 1829: "We are an exception among people. We belong to those who are not an integral part of humanity but exist only to teach the world some type of great lesson". Satter writes about the lives of ordinary people in periods of dramatic social change and describes the decline of the Soviet economy and ideology, perestroika, the attempted coup of 1991, the economic reforms of the 1990s, the rise of the Russian mafia, the sinking of the Kursk submarine, and the Russian apartment bombings.
Ideas
Satter emphasizes the importance of psychology and the opinions of the general population for the development and future of the country. He argues that the Soviet ideology and propaganda undermined the "moral center" of the Soviet people and investigates the "criminalization of consciousness" in contemporary Russia where, in his view, the mafia and corrupted state officials are all powerful. Satter noted that "Russia has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and the death rate of a country at war...and some of it was caused by poverty, some by alcoholism." Satter quotes the director of Russia's State Center for Preventive Medicine saying that the depopulation and alcoholism are caused by "the spiritual condition of the Russian people and the failure of the new society to provide a new purpose after the fall of communism."
Reviews
Angus Macqueenn found some similarities between his book Darkness at Dawn and Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya: "Both these books underline the moral vacuum that the destruction of the Soviet Union has left. There are no values to believe in except theft."
Documentary films
A documentary film is being made based on David Satter's book Age of Delirium. It is expected to completed by December, 2007. David Satter also appears in the documentary "Disbelief" about the Russian apartment bombings made by director Andrei Nekrasov in 2004.
Notes
- ^ Nothing left but theft, Review of Darkness at Dawn by Angus Macqueen, Guardian Unlimited
- Disbelief. The record in IMDB.
- Google Video
His books
- David Satter. Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-300-08705-5
- David Satter. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-300-09892-8
- David Satter. The Future of an Illusion. Yale University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-300-11145-2
External links
Some of his articles
- His articles at the Hudson Institute site
- Who Killed Alexander Litvinenko?
- The Return of the Soviet Union
- A Low, Dishonest Decadence: A Letter from Moscow.