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Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: Although many of the stories seemed a little exagerated, the book is a great read. After living in Bulgaria for two years I can relate to many of the authors experinces, and add that Eastern Europe is a crazzy place. If you want some insight into the life and times of Eastern Europe, than this book is for you. It is a fast read.
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Summary: Brzezinski Pontificating with Ethnocentric Tunnel Vision
Review: Brezezinski offers nothing more than personal asinine butchered urban tales that appeal to people like himself--droll dunderheads lacking in both originality & sincerity. "Moskviche" would love to thank this "author."
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Summary: Excellent Illustration of the "New Wild West"
Review: I read this book cover-to-cover this past weekend and found that it captures the spirit and feelings I experienced while working and living in Russia myself in 1994-1996 as a highly paid and pampered business consultant. To this day, I still cannot accurately explain the living and working conditions as an expat in Russia/East Europe during those crazy years. I generally resort to pulling out the more than 300 hours of videotape and some 4000 pictures I took while there in order to remind myself what I went through. I do recall both cursing and thanking my circumstances on a daily basis -- cursing the long winter days, the inability to accomplish simple business tasks; thanking the opportunity I had to help transform the former "Evil Empire" into a potential commercial, financial, military and social ally of the West (Needless to say, those expats on the ground during those years had some lofty aspirations.)I have been back to Moscow (as recently as this recent August) many times since my long-term stay and continually ask myself how the changes put into play in the early/mid-1990s resulted in the current state of the country and people. For all of those who want to know what it was like during those wild and insane mid-1990s as an expat in Russia, this book is for you. There is no need for endless hours of videotape and pictures to see -- this book captures a big chunk of history in a neat and concise bundle.
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Summary: "Matthew's Misadventures in the New Eastern Europe"
Review: I really liked Brzezinski's book, and I think you will too as long as you don't go into it expecting something along the lines of Chrystia Freeland's "Sale of the Century." Freeland is an incredible reporter and had gained amazing access to the machinations in the Kremlin. Brzezinski even pays tribute to Freeland's talents in his book. Granted, there is a hard-earned interview with the 'wily' Anatoly Chubais, but short of brief episodes like that, this is really the story of Brzezinski himself and his fiancee (now wife) Roberta as they navigate along the shoals of the East's first brush with capitalism. So it's not really "WSJ reporter Brzezinski demonstrates his knowledge of Russian bond yield curves..." but rather "Hey, here's what was going on in my personal life while I was writing those stories." And for me, that's a fresh take, and here's where his editors and marketers have sold him short: only about 25% of the book takes place in Moscow. The author also takes you to Vladivostok, Sakhalin, St. Petersburg, Chernobyl, Minsk, Crimea, and Poland - and that's not a complete list. In fact, I thought the writings from Vladivostok were the book's finest passages, closely followed by Chernobyl. I think readers will be pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of this book. It is worth noting that Brzezinski's work is available in paperback, while Freeland's effort - despite being the definitive account of the period - is now out of print (hardback only) despite its contemporaneous publication date.
Rating:
Summary: Red Whine
Review: I've never felt compelled to throw a book away. Until this one.
A reporter for a widely respected newspaper, dropped into '90s Moscow's whirling clash of cultures, should be able to come away with quite a collection of stories. And, to be fair, Brzezinski has some humorous stuff, and some interesting tales, but they're buried among too much personal detritus. There is far too much about the author, his family ties (enough already about "Uncle Zbig!") and his resentment of all things Russian. I've never read a book with such a smug (yet whiny) protagonist.
He didn't much like Russians (and had a big chip on his shoulder throughout the book), and he had little use for the expat community. With all his complaining, I wondered throughout this book why Brzezinski agreed to go to Russia, then why he stayed there, then why he bothered to write about it.
There's a good book somewhere in the Russia of the 1990s. This isn't it.
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Summary: 1990s News from the Frontlines of Crony Capitalism in Russia
Review: If you read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, many of the stories in this book will seem familiar to you. They should. Matthew Brzezinski was a reporter for both publications in the 1990s. In this witty revealing book, he shares with you not only the stories he covered but the experiences he had in covering them and living in Kiev and Moscow. The stories are connected by his descriptions of what happened to him, his fiancee, their friends, and the people he wrote about. The book begins with being mugged in his own apartment by a confidence team in Kiev and ends with leaving the country to avoid confiscatory taxation. Unfortunately, he ends up having a regret. A year later, one of his Journal colleagues wins a Pulitzer for her reporting of the aftermath of the Russian debt crisis. Crony Capitalism is the name that has been applied to the Russian tendency for government officials to share the benefits of special favors with their buddies, and probably get a rake-off in the process. In substance, it is little different than the corruption in many third-world countries. The key difference is that Russia as an advanced industrial country with lots of natural resources had a lot of booty to share. As a result, people arise out of nowhere to command enterprises worth billions. And disappear just as quickly when their sponsors in the government are ousted. Although these scenes occur in the 1990s, they will remind you of stories about Prohibition in the United States. For example, night spots are publicly rated for the likelihood that criminals will start shooting at each other in them as well as the likelihood of being able to arrange for sexual favors. Business people operate with teams of former commandos as body guards. The disregard for society's needs is pretty strong. In a section called "The Zone" you will read about visiting the radioactive sites in and around Chernobyl. While the visitors are wearing protective gear and leaving quickly when the radiation count gets too high, people have been bribed with good jobs to come work and live in these dangerous areas without any protection. Stories about six-fingered children and other indications of genetic damage abound. But the most chilling story for me was about a training session in capitalism run for some youths in a Young Pioneers camp. Set up to mimic a free market, the youngsters were soon counterfeiting money, intimidating each other, cornering scarce supplies, and generally running the show corruptly to favor themselves. It seemed like a perfect analogy for what was occuring in the whole country. With such an ingrained, warped reaction to wide-open capitalism, can Russian have much hope for improvement? I certainly hope so. But, if that is to occur, the prescription will not be found in these pages that outline the abuses. The stories of daily living are also compelling. If you drive a car in the capital, you will get at least one traffic ticket a day. That's the way that the local Moscow police earn a living wage. On some days, you might get two. For an airplane trip, no one is sure if the planes will take off or land. Great risks are run in the process. Businesses don't pay their taxes, workers, or bills. The new rich seem to be living at the ultimate, while most are desperately poor. Naturally, a lot of this goes up in smoke when the currency crashes in the debt crisis. Savings are destroyed, and foreigners leave behind the billions that they thought they had scored big with. Clearly, much of the money earned through Crony Capitalism was simply looted and sent to foreign bank accounts. The result was probably to impoverish the country more than it was to begin with. After you finish this fascinating book, think about where else unrestrained greed has negative consequences. How can the benefits of individual iniative be gained in the context of lawlessness . . . except by joining a criminal gang? That seems like the lesson of this book. Where's Wyatt Earp? Appreciate your responsibilities to others as a way to ensure the benefits of being supported by their efforts as well as your own.
Rating: 
Summary: Scared to death of Russia now?
Review: Man, had I not been to Russia as many times already that I have...and I was getting read to leave and had read this book, I would be too scared to go!! Mr. Brzezinski's book is entertaining at best. It glances over some important parts in today's Russia. However, it is too damn moralistic and bemoans the same whining, bitching and complaining that 98% of all the expats living in Moscow complain about...it's not like home. Well, duh...
If you have been following news out of Russia, this book will add nothing new to your bank of knowledge. If you have never been to Russia and you are getting ready to go to Russia, don't let this book scare you away.
Rating:
Summary: Red Whine
Review: Man, had I not been to Russia as many times already that I have...and I was getting read to leave and had read this book, I would be too scared to go!!! Mr. Brzezinski's book is entertaining at best. It glances over some important parts in today's Russia. However, it is too damn moralistic and bemoans the same whining, bitching and complaining that 98% of all the expats living in Moscow complain about...it's not like home. Well, duh... If you have been following news out of Russia, this book will add nothing new to your bank of knowledge. If you have never been to Russia and you are getting ready to go to Russia, don't let this book scare you away.
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Summary: The Robber Barons of Moscow
Review: Matthew Brzezinski, former reporter in the Moscow bureau of The Wall Street Journal (and nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's anti-Soviet National Security Advisor) writes about his time in Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a gambling mentality took over from the collapsed aspirations of Russia's 70 year experiment with Communism.
His book captures something of the atmosphere of Moscow and the former Soviet Union of the 1990s when anything seemed possible in the world of finance, set in a time and place in which Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and Potanin were discussed with the same awe (and envy) as Bezos, Case and (Martha) Stewart were in the United States.
One tale of a board meeting in the mid-1990s in the chapter "Potemkin Inc." (after the phrase "Potemkin village", a sham devised by 18th century bureaucrats to impress their sovereign) is particularly telling, not only about how far corporate governance has to go to attract foreign investors but also how the 'Soviet' mentality continues:
"One by one, the nine board members followed, one elderly official pausing by the microphone. 'Foreigners need to think about the future of the plant and about the welfare of its employees, not just about pumping profits,' he spat, white with anger. 'This meeting is over,' he added, storming off the stage."
Such comments have a familiar tone to consumers of Soviet propaganda. For 70 years the Soviet Union spoke of the horrors of Western imperialism, while at the same time running the most far-reaching totalitarian empire the world has ever seen.
At times Casino Moscow veers too much between being a personal memoir of his time in Moscow along with his growing relationship with Roberta and the larger story of the first few years of freedom in Russia. Snippets of the life of an expat in Moscow-the problems with personal staff, fears about safety, frustration with the petty bureaucracy-leave the reader wanting to learn more about what it is like to be in a country that has collapsed and is trying to find its place in the world community. Although I can sympathize with the desire for maintaining discretion regarding his wife's career, it was somewhat teasing that Brzezinski doesn't name her shadowy (although well known in Russian finance circles) and immensely profitable employer; he writes, "...I have taken the liberty of changing [her firm's name] to VSO, for Very Secretive Organization." Such subterfuge does little to dispel the notion of a cabal of financiers plotting the future of the world behind the scenes (which does not make Western capital look too attractive to its recipients).
Casino Moscow is an enjoyable book to read for anyone wondering about the beginnings of Russia's post-Soviet history.
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