In 1995, February to May, I learned enough Russian language to answer the telephone in our Yekaterinburg two-room flat. If the caller spoke only Russian, I learned to answer in their language:
“I don’t understand. I am American.” Then I hung up.
If today, as you read and hear about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and you want to understand more about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, I suggest a book of 687 pages: Never Speak to Strangers, the writings of David Satter. He was Moscow correspondent for the London Financial Times, later the Wall Street Journal.
During my four months living a day’s train ride east of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin was the head of a would-be democracy. Read Sattar’s previous writings and you find out when Yeltsin hired Putin. And how that autocrat turned Russia into an oligarchy.
Keep reading to better understand why the Kremlin kicked David Satter out of Russia. You may better understand why the Russians now invade Ukraine.
Our U.S. Information Agency hired this journalism professor to advise how the Ural State University journalism curriculum could move from teaching propaganda to factual reporting. Now, I often think, perhaps I quit teaching factual reporting too soon in our own country.
During my four months in Yekaterinburg, I wrote a few “A Texan in Russia” columns. I emailed my words to El Campo and Wharton—two bi-weekly newspapers in South Texas that Fred Barbee published and I owned half interest.
My college roommate Fred the Printer didn’t pay me extra. But I have since written blogs about Russian door locks, sex shops, the abacus, and Lake Baikal– a stop on the Trans-Siberian railway. Didn’t know about Putin in 1995.
If you want to understand more of why we now find ourselves on the edge of World War III, join me as I read Correspondent David Satter’s previous dispatches from Russia and the Soviet Union.
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