Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Taylor take the reader on a journey across Russia’s 11 time zones in this fascinating and revealing mix of travelogues, history, politics, current affairs and sociology. Nina Khrushcheva is Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter and has been reporting on the Soviet Union and Russia since 1983, and Taylor is a journalist who lives in Moscow. They know the country well, and bring a non-judgmental and unbiased approach to the land and its people. Their descriptions are vivid and atmospheric and the result is a snapshot of this most enigmatic of countries, Many of their encounters will feel familiar to anyone who has travelled in Russia where absurdity, rudeness and obstruction go hand-in-hand with warm hospitality and genuine affection. Ordinary people get their chance to express their opinions and the result is revealing and sometimes surprising. Essential reading for any Russophile, but also for anyone who would like to understand more about Russia today.

The authors are Khrushchev's granddaughter who lives in New York and an American married to a Russian who lives in Moscow. They embark on a trip across Russia's eleven time zones in response to a speech once given by Putin. Their narrative is part history lesson, part political and part travelogue. Some of it is a bit Trip-Advisorish with tourist stories of rude ticket sellers and government officials. There's a lot about the coffee shops, restaurants, museums and cab rides.
I think though they only scratched the surface if what they were looking for and really did not seem to conduct anything more than a passing dialogue with the locals. There was a bit of ill-balanced with a lot of anti Putin comparisons with the reformers of Gorbachov, Yelstin and Khrushchev. As well as a tendency to be a bit derogatory such as comparing one city favourable against the normalcy of New York. Svetlana Alexievich in her Second-Hand Time gets much closer to the soul of modern Russia.

The new stories were no longer those of Yeltsin’s Russia, which was perceived, both at home and abroad, as a weak, insignificant, and corrupt bogeyman reeling from its Cold War defeat. These were stories of an enigmatic young technocrat tirelessly crisscrossing the country and meeting with workers, farmers, and cultural figures, attending theater galas and factory openings.

That technocrat was Vladimir Putin. During his travels rebranding the government’s image (and Russia’s by extension), he’d noticed parts of the country “starving for the Kremlin’s attention.” So he considered giving a New Year’s Eve speech as midnight tolled in each of Russia’s eleven time zones (eleven is disputed, in a fascinating bit of geopolitics here.) Spoiler alert: it was an unattainable dream.

But the impetus for this overzealous feat indicated something more: Putin wanted to emphasize Russia as united under an overarching national identity. With far-flung hinterlands and an array of sociological differences among the populace, solidifying national identity is key in touting the country’s strength, and ensuring it’s under central control. “The perennial dilemma of a country as large as Russia: what the central government in Moscow ordains does not always hold in the provinces.”

It may be physically vast, an unwieldy amalgamation of nationalities, languages, religions, cultures, and backgrounds that together seem more cacophonous than harmonious, but the idea was Putin’s attempt at subtly fostering a sense of connection in “ever-paradoxical, geographically distended Russia.”

Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter Nina Khrushcheva, Russian-born and now a New Yorker, and Jeffrey Tayler, a Moscow-based American author and journalist, decided to trace Putin’s hypothetical route for that speech. It wound them through the country’s boundless expanses, where glimpses of life and customs beyond the westernized metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg could shed light on the current state of the empire. This includes on-the-ground responses to Putin’s policies, primary among them “the ultimate Kremlin message: embracing our past makes Russia great.”

Both of us wondered if the Kremlin had really managed to impose its writ on a hinterland traditionally impervious to change, but nevertheless having undergone three dramatic political and social upheavals in the past century alone. Determined to find out, in the spring and summer of 2017 we did something close to the sequential trans-Russia journey from which Putin found he had to desist…in search of the factors – among them, natural resources, educational institutions, ethnic and religious diversity, and strategic assets – that define Russia and its place in the world.

Do the three imperial pillars of Russia’s past still uphold an empire of Putin’s present?

It’s an undertaking as far-reaching as Putin’s was. But unlike him they complete it, and it provides ample opportunities for insights, impressions, and uncomfortable truths.

As a deeper exploration of politics and the development of national identity, it falls somewhat short. Like Putin’s New Year speech extravaganza, it was a bit too ambitious. The political and social questions posed are worthwhile, but would have necessitated longer stays in each hinterland locale and deeper research with consulted experts in each. A book like Anne Garrels’ Putin Country looks at similar issues within one city, Chelyabinsk, and is more successful on that front for its streamlined focus.

As a travelogue, even one with the constant presence of sociopolitical topics, this works much better. The authors conduct their research by taking the temperature among encountered locals, having casual talks with taxi drivers and cafe-goers. They also visit regionally specific museums, another way of sussing out what’s important to a place’s identity. This is, to be sure, a good method for gauging public sentiment and what’s valued, but it also felt a bit casual – again, more light travelogue than anything else. They arrange interviews with regional experts who give the most insight into economic and political issues, considering how these appear in each location. Kaliningrad, Ukraine’s Kiev, Ulan-Ude, Lake Baikal, Arkhangelsk, Vladivostok (maybe my favorite chapter) and Novosibirsk are covered, among other stops.

As for the cafes and museums, this is where its bones as a travel piece show through. Cafe scenes are interesting reading, but not necessarily settings for serious current affairs. There are other books that address these issues in a more organized way -the aforementioned Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia or Bears in the Streets for a travelogue with more pointed purpose and the ability to show changes in the same places over decades. But this still offers an interesting and worthwhile angle, questioning the layering of a complicated past onto an unsure, often unstable present.

The travel writing is descriptive and atmospheric, impressive considering its unusual subjects, like when describing Omsk in Siberia: a “city that seems to have never caught a break,” that exudes a “feeling that life was somewhere else, beyond Omsk’s dusty borders.”

Or a surreal moment in Yakutsk: “In this remote city on the shore of the Lena River, where the wilderness is vast enough that it has served as a realm of exile, and where woolly mammoths are the objects of local pride, American movies serve to connect the inhabitants to people in the outside world … The juxtaposition of Mel Gibson’s image above Sakha gamesters, of bingo inside and bog outside, combined with the palpable sensation of being far from anywhere we knew induced a disorienting feeling of alienation.”

The most significant theme, and one the authors illustrate vividly, is Russia’s duality. It’s literal, as in the double-headed eagle seen on the cover, and also comprises Russia’s longtime identity, or the crisis of one. Duality permeates so much of national identity and politics, even affecting names, like in oft-rechristened St. Petersburg. The authors attribute this perceived exaggerated tendency to rename to “the country’s binary spirit, with the currents of history sweeping first in one direction and then in the other.”

They also focus on the concept of Russian identity’s inextricable link, for better or worse, to the West: “Russia derives much of its identity from the West, either in imitation of it or in opposition to it. It has both striven to define itself as Western and what the West is not.” The authors return repeatedly to a concept of a “display of feelings of insecurity and superiority all at once…think of the double-headed eagle, the split-personality syndrome.”

It’s tough to summarize, as it covers a lot of ground, metaphorically and literally. It has its weak spots as it asks many questions seeking to understand what’s making Russia great again and how, if that’s indeed happening at all, but it doesn’t answer them all. And it was, like Putin’s one-night-only jetsetting, too ambitious. But as an evocative travelogue and glimpse into regions that don’t often dominate social, political, or economic discussions, it’s excellent.

Each rail from the narrow-gauge railway, uzkokoleika, that used to carry ore up and down the mountain, was engraved with the words ‘Zavod Imeni I.V. Stalina’ (the J.V. Stalin factory). None here was ever to forget for whom they toiled – to the death.
Riding to Magadan’s airport, we encountered the image of another leader whose presence is constantly felt everywhere in Russia – Vladimir Putin. From a billboard towering over the once deadly Kolyma Route, dressed in khaki fatigues and a naval cap, he wished us, said the caption, ‘a good trip.’

"In Putin's Footsteps" was an interesting if not quite compelling read. The premise of the book whereby its two authors - a Russian living in America and an American living in Russia - travel to a location in each of Russia's eleven time zones to (as it were) take the pulse of life in each of those regions, is its strength. Its weakness lies in the writing itself, which veers from one author's perspective to the other's, and from travel narrative to tangential musings, and regularly sounds like promotional material for ex-Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev (who one of the authors is directly descended from) and never quite comes together. Too many times it felt like Russia was too big, too impenetrable, too unwieldy for its authors to cram into one book of modest length.

This is a remarkable and timely book. Part political essays, part travelogue, it goes into the depth of Russia as a country and as a myth. It is very contemporary in its themes and it will serve as a useful guide to those Westerners who wish to learn more about today's Russia and "what it's all about, anyway?" At the same time, it is more than this: politics and today's issues are just one of the side of the story. The greatest achievement of the book is painting Russia the way it wants to see itself: its myth and its reality, its culture and its history, its essence and its problems, from both Russian eyes and looking at it as a foreigner. I am not saying that this book alone will explain Russia to you if you know nothing about it, but it will come really close. Very much recommended.