Based on extensive research, including several interviews with Vladimir Putin, this revealing book chronicles Russia's dramatic reemergence on the world stage, illuminating the key reason for its rebirth: the use of its ever-expanding energy wealth to reassert its traditional great powerambitions. In his deft, informative narrative, Marshall Goldman traces how this has come to be, and how Russia is using its oil-based power as a lever in world politics. The book provides an weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time theamazing details of how these partisans and their families-hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather-managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to killtwenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis. Herself a Holocaust Goldman tells this story with panache, as only one of the world's leading authorities on Russia could. In a new preface, the author has updated the book to account for the many significant events that have occurred since the original publication: the Russia-Georgia war, which was primarily about energy; Russia's squeeze on its European gas customers in late 2008; and Putin's continuing influence overthe industry after his presidency ended. | Petrostate by Marshall I. Goldman, Paperback | Indigo Chapters