https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osa-bl3P7h8
Press Reviews:
“Winter Is Coming” presents a picture of the internal forces propelling Russia’s descent into aggressive authoritarianism. And it offers a scathing analysis of the contribution of the West to that outcome.” – by GABRIEL SCHOENFELD for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“The biggest problem is that the West that Kasparov longs for does not exist. Voters in democratic countries tend to prefer low key leaders and a quiet life to blood, sweat, toil and tears. How does one defend a free world that does not want to defend itself? Let us hope that Kasparov’s book becomes a bestseller.” – by Edward Lucas for The Times (UK)
“Clinton did too little, Bush did too much, Obama did nothing,” Kasparov said. “There’s a huge territory between war and peace, and it’s called leadership. It’s not like chess, black and white.” – by ALEC J. GRIGORIAN and MENAKA V. NARAYANAN for The Harvard Crimson
“Bursting with pent-up fury, he argues the west is making a tragic mistake in appeasing Mr Putin over Ukraine. Instead, it should isolate him, slap stiff sanctions on all the Kremlin’s cronies and sell lethal arms to Kiev. “Dictators only stop when they are stopped,” he thunders.” by John Thornhill for FINANCIAL TIMES
“It’s not that the book is difficult or dull. In fact, it’s lively and readable, especially considering that its subject — Russia’s return to authoritarianism — is so depressing.” by By Tom Nichols for The Federalist.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
Russia, Kasparov: “Per capire le prossime mosse di Putin si guardi al suo budget di guerra” via AdnKronos.com
The stun
ning story of Russia’s slide back into dictatorship—and how the West is now paying the price for allowing it to happen.
“As one of the most influential critics of Vladimir Putin’s reign of Terror, Garry Kasparov has become a champion for the causes of freedom, democracy and human rights in Russia.”
—United States Senator John McCain
“It’s always important to read Garry Kasparov, who warned the dangers of Putinism long before so many others. He is that rare thing: A Russian democrat who is realistic about his country, but remains hopeful for the future.”
—Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag and Iron Curtain, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
“Garry Kasparov is a mastermind in chess and politics, and he understands the evil of the Putin regime better than anyone. This book is a clear and accurate observation of the mess we are in due to the West’s inaction towards Putin, and a stark warning of what will happen if we fail to act in the future. It should be required reading for every head of state and their electorate.”
—Bill Browder, author of Red Notice
ABOUT “WINTER IS COMING”
Garry Kasparov combines his unique background and insight with insider knowledge and a strategic view of history and current events to examine the threats the free world is facing today. Winter Is Coming blends three parallel storylines:
- The disintegration of the Soviet Union as Mikhail Gorbachev fumbled and failed, Russia’s transition to a fragile and incomplete democracy under Boris Yeltsin, and how Vladimir Putin has exploited Russian fears and Western cowardice to rebuild a KGB dictatorship and destabilize the world order.
- The relationship the dysfunctional relationship the world’s leading nations have had with Russia since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Reaganite moral leadership that won the Cold War was quickly abandoned as the US and Europe celebrated. Russia’s instability and corruption were ignored and abetted from the start, from the complacent Clinton-Yeltsin 90s to Putin convincing George W. Bush that he was an ally.
- Garry Kasparov’s own story as a Soviet chess champion who spoke out against the Soviet system and went on to become a leading voice for democracy and individual freedom, first as an activist leader in Russia and then as the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation.
Winter Is Coming continues into the current crisis of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and other cases where the complacency of the free world has allowed threats to proliferate, from ISIS and Boko Haram to domestic terror. Kasparov shows that while there are no easy solutions, action against these threats must come now because the price of stopping them will keep going up.
Everyone wants solutions to a current crisis. What to do about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? What about ISIS and Boko Haram? It’s fine that everybody is telling me, “You were right about Putin! But what do we do now?” But first you have to understand the root causes and the big picture and that’s why I wrote Winter Is Coming. This is a crisis 25 years in the making and op-eds and tweets aren’t enough to provide the necessary perspective.
History and current events aren’t as clear as chess or mathematics, but they also follow patterns. Putin’s dictatorship did not appear out of nowhere. Western complacency after the end of the Cold War has led to hot spots appearing all over the globe. Even worse, the complacency is continuing even in the face of war in Europe.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR GARRY KASPAROV AND WINTER IS COMING
“Garry Kasparov has written a passionate indictment both of Russia’s kleptocracy and the complacency of Western democracies in the face of Putin. This threat has become our central foreign policy challenge, and Kasparov’s arguments are essential in understanding how to face it.” —Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University, author of The End of History and the Last Man and Political Order and Political Decay
“Garry Kasparov is a mastermind in chess and politics, and he understands the evil of the Putin regime better than anyone. This book is a clear and accurate observation of the mess we are in due to the West’s inaction towards Putin, and a stark warning of what will happen if we fail to act in the future. It should be required reading for every head of state and their electorate.” —Bill Browder, author of Red Notice
“Garry Kasparov has the information-processing capacity of a supercomputer and the eloquence of an extraordinary orator. It takes a mind and a heart like his to analyze the last 25 years of the history of Russia in the world and emerge with not only an indictment of Western complicity but a clear call for Western action. Required reading for anyone planning to run in, work on, or vote in the 2016 presidential campaign.” —Masha Gessen, author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
