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The book provides a detailed description of the Russian crime of the twenty-first century as well as a thorough examination of the eighty sessions of the nine-month-long trial (during 2016-2017) of Boris Nemtsovs alleged killers. It directs attention to the chief obstacle in determining what precisely happened shortly before midnight on February 27, 2015, on a bridge located a mere stones throw away from the Kremlin, in an area under the active surveillance of the Russian Federal Protective Service. The glaring absence of closed circuit videos from this most heavily guarded site in Russia is underscored. Given the absence of such key evidence, those seeking to investigate the murder have been akin to blind people stumbling about in obscurity. The attempts to penetrate this man-made fog undertaken during the course of the trial by the Nemtsov family attorneys, Vadim Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova, as well as by numerous tenacious analysts of the crime, such as former deputy Russian energy minister Vladimir Milov, former Russian presidential economics advisor Andrei Illarionov, and leading mathematician Andrei Piontkovskii, are covered in full. The uneven case mounted by the prosecution and the scrappy defense effort of the attorneys for the alleged killers, many of them ethnic Chechens, are highlighted, as is the non-unanimous verdict which was reached by the twelve jurors. The findings of this study are in agreement with those of a number of commentators who contend that the actual organizers of the crime remain at large as does the assassinations shadowy mastermind.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Amid the chaos and violence of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, the Tsar's opponents printed and distributed vast quantities of picture postcards. Easy to share, hide and smuggle, postcards were a way to beat the censor and spread a message of defiance. Produced by a diverse set of revolutionaries, liberals, and opportunists, the content of these cards is equally wide-ranging: from satirical caricatures directed against the government to rare photographs of revolutionary demonstrations. Many of the cards are darkly humorous, combining laughter with a sense of raw indignation at the injustices of Imperial Russia.

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Russia's Long Interaction with Islam
• 2. Muslims in the Russian Cultural Imagination
• 3. The Communist Offensive against Islam
• 4. The Soviet Quest Abroad for Muslim Allies
• 5. Perestroika and Its Complications
• 6. The Islamic Question in the Russian Federation
• 7. Dealing with the "Near Abroad"
• 8. The Recovery of Russian External Confidence
• 9. Russia's Internal Politics under Putin
• 10. The Assertion of Russian Power and Status
• 11.The Fateful Years: 2015 to the Present
• 12. Possible Futures
• Further Reading

Russia has long played an influential part in its world of Islam, and not all the dimensions are as widely understood as they ought to be. In Russia and Its Islamic World, Robert Service examines Russia's interactions with Islam at home and around the globe and pinpoints the tsarist and Soviet legacy, current complications, and future possibilities. The author details how the Russian encounter with Islam was close and problematic long before the twenty-first century and how Russia has recently chosen to interfere in Muslim states of the Middle East, building alliances and making enemies. Service reveals how some features of the present-day relationship continue past policies; others are starkly and perilously different, making the current moment in global affairs dangerous for both Russians and the rest of us. He describes how the Kremlin dominates Muslims in the Russian Federation, exerts a deep influence on the Muslim-inhabited states on Russia's southern frontiers, and has lunged militarily and politically into the Middle East. Foreign Muslims, he shows, do not value the leadership in Moscow except as a means to an end; Putin's pose as a friend of the Islamic world is no more than a pose-and a hypocritical one at that.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)