The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (PublicAffairs), by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

The KGB was abolished with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but by the time Boris Yeltsin stepped down as Russia’s president, the various agencies that emerged from the old Soviet secret police coalesced into a powerful new entity called the FSB. In The New Nobility, Russian investigative journalists trace the origins and purpose of the FSB and Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin leader whose career began in the KGB. They find that the new agency is actually more unbridled than its predecessor, which was supervised at all levels by Communist Party officials. Of course, the essential difference between then and now is that until Glasnost, Soldatov and Borogan stood no chance of being heard in their homeland. But the comfort they take is cold, given the number of Russian reporters murdered under suspicious circumstances in recent years.