public schools in "reign of terror." another book is "the hidden wealth of nations" which he describes as a short, pioneering guide to evade or avoid paying taxes. ted koppel's "lights out" examines the vulnerability of america's power grid. ..

>> that is on. >> good evening, welcome to the overseas press club of america. i'm patricia kranz, executive director. you know tonight is our book night for "putin country: a journey into the real russia". by anne garrels. i will give you a brief promo before we get into the program. the opening see is a group of foreign correspondents promoted and honoring the best in international journalism. we hold off her book nights like the one tonight, and numerous other programs.

and a few months ago there were over 80 people in the former soviet union. we did that with the harryman institute and we know covering the world has been more dangerous which is why the opc joined with the frontline freelance register to protect journalists, other advocacy groups, and news organizations for principles protecting freelancers on dangerous assignments. if you are not already a member please consider joining. there are applications and it is very easy to join. if you are 29 and under, and and

foreign correspondents for 23 years until 2011. and "putin country: a journey into the real russia" is her second book, the first was megan in baghdad. the courage in journalism award for the media foundation. and recognizing environmental reporting. next is bill keller, editor-in-chief of the marshall project. he worked for the new york times from 1984 to 2014 as a correspondence, editor and op-ed columnist.

he covered the collapse of the soviet union, winning a pulitzer prize, and 2003 until 2011 he was executive editor of the new york times. so take it away. >> i will open it to questions from the floor. >> to figure out how much time we have left to squeeze in questions from the audience. i ran across this quote, 2015 nobel prize winner, which i am going to read for starters and then put on the shelf. in the west, people demonize vladimir putin, they do not understand there is a collective vladimir putin consisting of millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the

west. there is a little piece of vladimir putin in every one. that is not a bad summary of your book. there is a blurb on the paperback. let's leave vladimir putin aside. and i heard you quoted somewhere saying throw a dart at a map. >> it was a lucky throw. >> we were there in 92 when i went back and corresponded and was traveling widely all the time, but was dropping in on places, i wanted a place to follow the evolution of people's views, get to know people. so that it wasn't just a

cursory, when issue triple. and and the protest began in moscow and the western media focused entirely on moscow and it was distorting. if you were looking -- if you were reading -- forgive me, the new york times, you would have thought the country was up in arms but out in the provinces, that was not the case. it is true that people were scared, or at least cautious. but also, there is a bit of vladimir putin in every one. vladimir putin gave people the benefit of high oil prices and gas prices, he gave people a

sense of economic prosperity the first time but i am jumping ahead. i didn't start thinking, as it went on it became clear that this was missing from what people were seeing about russia. it was middle russia, middle america, with focused as if washington was america, and there is a strange beast out there that we might not fully understand. >> a little more isolated than other prudential cities, there was home to the soviet nuclear program, and -- >> i did throw a dart. it could have been anywhere,

could have been somewhere else. it could have been somewhere else, any number of places. i couldn't decide, it was a pretty good choice because i didn't just cover the city but the region and it bore all the marks of a detroit or bubba bubba -- bubba bubba -- pittsburgh. everything was wrapped up. the home of the soviet weapon. and it was a nice addition. >> our people more conservative? >> the weapons program was isolated from them. they did not know anything about

it until 88, 89, people couldn't talk about it. >> what kind of place is it? >> and industrial city where the industry is in the center of town, in the early days it represented a great way to describe the effects of world war ii, it was beyond the urals, it was safe from hitler, and it was far away, could not be

collaborators and where the factories went in order to build tanks, known as tanker fraud during world war ii and the population exploded, people living in unspeakable conditions during that period, took a while to resolve and the legacy of that if there was a kind of pride, it made it more conservative, and when opened to the west, it was like wow each i describe in the book going the 7-day averages, for a month.

in the communist party theater. 600 people, not that they came away going yes and initial flags and quit smoking. after a wild, most of the women and only a few but people came out saying it was really interesting, they were exploring ideas, and a delusional idea what the west was, that it had to be paved in gold, they had the answer to everything and if only russia could be like the west everything would be wonderful. it began to travel, whether it was a turkish vacation or the sinai for a beach vacation, they began to learn more and more about what the rest of the world

was like. and they betrayed the west was moving closer to their borders, relations were not going so well and that is where vladimir putin played on people's feelings. wait a minute, first of all they felt like betrayed lovers because they had delusional ideas about the west. second of all the west began to treat russia ignoring it and it was a toxic combination. >> a lot of your characters including the most sophisticated of them come across as walking contradictions. the magazine editor dresses like something out of vogue, and the west was conspiring to bring russia to its knees, and to

idolize western culture, but feel humiliated and defensive. >> becomes more popular by the day. it is a total contradiction and one of the most poignant characters is somebody who wants to make changes. but he supports putting vladimir putin vertical, passionately. even though that is what is stopping him from doing what he wants to make the necessary changes. you can't argue with him. you reach a dead end. and an element, vladimir putin is not the best thing that come down the pike. but it could be worse. what is going on now, i hope i

can go back, it is unlikely there. and if you do have the strict vertical. and and the governor's office. it is all about power and money,

it is really file. it represent a little bit of where people say you think vladimir putin is bad, it could be a lot worse. he could be ultranationalist. one of the things i kept saying is where are the redlines? or the kids say they are utterly apathetic and vladimir putin is -- they can download whatever music they want, whatever movies they want, for a while the economy was doing pretty well for 2012-13. and we become self-sufficient, it is a big challenge.

and pump -- some poor schmuck who says i don't leave in god gets a sentence. why is he singled out for posting this on the russian version of facebook? and any number of people this year come under the extremism laws that are so vague anybody can come under them depending on the court in the region. it is a mix. once again a contradiction. on the one hand it seems a lot of freedom, kids say we don't notice anything, we can travel. >> talk a little bit about the church and the role it has

played even pre-latimer. in. >> the church was slow to get with the program initially. didn't know how to deal especially in that province, the communists probably called a godless region. it was very scientific. it didn't have as much presence as other towns because people were highly academic. it was caught unawares and no idea how to begin to be a community activist and reach out and be anything other than it had again. a lot of foreign missionaries targeted the province like seventh-day adventists who had limited success but a lot of pentecostal and baptist churches

went out there and did a lot and did a lot early on, specifically they were the first ones to set up with addiction centers, they are better than the state run, they make inroads and the church having earned a lot of money because it was getting tax free cigarettes and tax-free cigarettes and liquor, managed to and gradually and it became popular and the right thing to do if you want to influence the right people to build a church and that has continued. i was with a professor, and he

asked the kids in his class, how many of you are believers? two third raised their hands, how many can name the four evangelists? two. out of 40. that doesn't mean to say it is necessarily powerless because of their ignorance. everybody wears crosses now, orthodox crosses, if the protestant churches had a fair go in the 90s, to open new churches, the orthodox church increasingly becoming more sophisticated in its propaganda and they have a tv program and

it is building. >> russian orthodox network programming. >> pretty boring. >> okay. you wrote about the lgbt community and i want to hear you talk about that in part, vladimir putin has an article about anti-western strategy. we are trying to so homosexuality and the use of russia. what is it like to be gay in that province? >> better than most of you would think but not as great a life as

someone who stayed there. it has gotten more difficult. there is one in particular, very popular, well attended gay bar for the restaurant open on friday and saturday and sunday night where it is packed and the best entertainment in town. i didn't understand most of it but it was so funny and none of the words were in my dictionary. they are very careful, there are bouncers, they check people, no weapons or drugs, they pat you down, they don't want to be shut down.

curiously, i am sure they could find them. the tax police, anybody could find any reason to shut anyone down and they haven't. his life interesting for anybody interested in the arts in the gay community has no predilection for liking those things but a lot are moving to where it is even better. >> or less bad. >> it is possible. if you want to adopt, if you have adopted in the past when things were a little easier, people afraid their kids will be taken away from them, the law as it stands doesn't ban homosexuality per se, but many of you know all of this, it bans

propaganda directed at minors which essentially means you can't talk publicly about homosexuality because a minor might hear it so it shuts down any discussion. the upshot of it is everybody is back in the closet. you don't say -- of eight years ago you might have said it or people might have known, now you are much more careful about that sort of thing. the interesting question is what is there feeling about americans or western europeans coming in and pushing the gay movement in russia. many of my friends and acquaintances i got to know in russia said back off which you

are making our lives, you are assuming we can move tomorrow to where you are, we are aware you are 40 years ago and you got to understand that. remember homosexuality was illegal until 91, 92, can't remember the year it was and you would be imprisoned. attitudes attitudes are very conservative even among liberal russians who i talked to, friends who are on the liberal political end of the spectrum, what do you think about this? they say i don't know anyone who is gay. what about uncle joe? just eccentric. sounds like conversations i had with my parents 40 years ago. the question of how hard to

press, things were doing okay, and they were able to live, and not just the populace -- >> one of the characters, the forensic pathologist. it is a peculiarly russian form of dissident, the kind of dissident calculate how far, usually goes a little far and gets his fingers burned, backs off but doesn't give up.

talk about glassbovee -- glassoff. >> that was during the soviet period. >> i want to leave room for people to ask questions. >> glassoff was one of the true joys, i probably left his office and apartment more drunk than sober. a devotee of champagne, good champagne. when the russian economy or soviet union broke apart, he and his wife, a doctor, making the equivalent of $10 a month and they couldn't live on that so he became a funeral director, the first and only one, he was very good at it.

and very successful. the local governor and the mayor and governor or whatever finally demanded more and more and more bribes. he finally said no. 's deputy was shot on his way out of the funeral business. glassoff went back to become the first and for a long time the only independent forensics expert in russia. you think given the vladimir putin courts, not exactly something -- a huge demand but essentially judges began to call on him. politically sensitive cases, when kids were killed in the

military, young men were killed because of the brutal hazing, he investigated those cases very successfully and if it was an open court system he would have won. the authorities came to him and said don't go any further and judges were also told don't go any further. there were places he can make his mark. and he continues, just an extraordinary guy. i keep asking, he has gone through, been imprisoned, i asked him finally why do you leave? you have a lot of money. somehow. still. he said i'm too russian and too

old. that is it. >> what is it like reporting in vladimir putin's russia? >> it was really easy for the longest time. or seemed to be. in the pre-vladimir putin era i couldn't stop people talking, in the 90s and early 2000s. after i retired in 2011 and was able to go back for long periods of time, i kept going back even when i was in iraq but only a week or a year. i thought everything in 2012 was sort of okay and they called me in but it is not okay and you

have to leave but i got a piece the next year. >> bureaucratic inefficiency. >> one hopes. and in jail for corruption. all the russian -- didn't he want to bribe? is there a way to solve this problem? he did not pick up on it. he wasn't going to take one for me but had taken one from everybody else paying for that. the next year i had similar problems but they didn't expel me that time but they took me in to the police station. they could get my computer and see what was on it. friends called in and have been called in and she is a very nice

woman. after all, what pensioner is going -- nobody in their right mind would go there on her own time. i got an email from friends saying they don't anticipate being able to go back and they say things are getting worse, not getting better. the crackdown they called for, not because of me, people working with ngos, things that have nothing to do with politics for the most part. >> if you went back, what would you be looking for? >> i want to know what kids are thinking. >> you have a chapter where you hung out in a charter school,

more privileged. >> for smart kids, not just privileged but smart. >> they didn't instill you with a lot of hope for the next generation. >> no. either they could get out, scientists and computer types, businesses, whatever, winning the olympiad for all those subjects in russia and they could go to moscow and stanford, oxford, cambridge, they knew they had a way out. they were quite patriotic too. there was an element of vladimir putin in all of them. >> if you went back you would find out what became of those kids, whether their attitudes changed. >> there is a class, upper-middle-class business men,

i got to know a few members, they were very leery of me although they all have kids who are in school too. there is a huge -- in the us, 50 grand a year. there is a raging business in miami, they have babies there. and get citizenship. i got a good explanation from the state department out to hear, but if you see them, the citizenship, they don't do that so -- that is another issue.

that is another issue i would like to explore further. there is a business in miami who deals with russian translators, take them to the hospital, they are there for the birth, translate everything -- >> wait'll donald trump hears about that. >> -- >> communism isn't. and neither is the desire to wallow themselves from the west.

what explains that. >> when the soviet union broke apart, all the other constituent, >> even though they did. there wasn't really an accounting. things that were buried, it was russia that was bad, it was moscow. another reason russians felt beaten up and they too didn't know what was good in their past and it was hard. for a wild, as you know, in the late 80s and 90s, people were

suddenly revealing what happened in their families, reading about the log -- glug in a point where kids say enough, already. okay. i want to go listen. and so i think that is part of it. and stalin, dorians, not just stalin, a friend of mine who is a historian and a very good one, he was going to a meeting with -- another conference where there would be foreigners and he was called in before hand and said you will not reveal anything that reflects badly on

this country. how do you discuss history? it is shutting down. if indeed you do want access to certain archives, and will not be allowed to travel abroad so that limits academics in terms of what they look into or not. the other thing is i was lucky in 2011. they are seeing them in coffee houses -- >> to default to the obvious

breaking news question. >> do you think -- change vladimir putin -- i only feel comfortable that the phenomena in of trump is similar to the vladimir putin phenomena and. to make the country great again. that is what vladimir putin has successfully -- >> the kgb and other casinos. >> it is a good one.

>> sorry, the trump commission in new york, trump built in new york. do you come across these people. two or three of them. >> they probably go to the same thing. >> similarly, not my area. >> the committee to protect journalists. my question, what would the american media do better for reporting russia today? >> get out of moscow. >> when it the last time you saw anybody get out of moscow except

ukraine. i was reading the media from iraq, and and our friends are back in the kitchens talking. they said they would never go back. on blogs, keeping their heads above the transom. you can be fingered for the craziest things. we need to explain why, it may

be distasteful, you don't want to appreciate or understand why people like vladimir putin but what mistakes -- did we make mistakes as americans in terms of treating russia like a loser? why are russians increasingly anti-western when you describe a friend of mine. dresses in the fanciest western clothes. and listening to our friends

bemoan, vladimir putin is brilliantly, with absolute ease, they have eaten themselves for lunch. and what happened there rather than saying it is vladimir putin. it is also the opposition. >> >> what you are saying is -- >> or be worse. quite possibly. several successful upper-middle-class people are going along with it because it

would be worse. and it exists, and there are these -- just beginning to learn about them now. these fights that are going on between different groups. i don't know what degree it is a threat to vladimir putin or just local. it is pretty nasty and you need to look at those. >> there are things i loved in your book, a couple things i really hated. hated. hated. you know the word hate? speaking in american politics. what i thought was particularly wonderful was when you were talking about amway.

a slug like jeffrey sachs. amway is the soft power of american and mary kay showing. entrepreneurial rule in their own lives. and the example of that kind of limited entrepreneurship and teaching people, not kids so much as middle-class people, people who had been bureaucrats, changing what they saw, what they could do with their lives. what i hated in your book, somebody has to stand up, you made him into a strong man,

don't think he set out to be corrupt but knew he was against but didn't know what he was 4. and lost control. some of your sentences setting up the contrast with what boris yeltsin tried to do were frankly wrong. the fat little pig he was, and the notion of enrich yourselves. i like the amway part. >> a mixed review. >> will you go back -- what was exciting was the emergence of the middle class. to start with, they had all been scurrying around trading, going to china, poland, wherever they could to buy goods on the

streets in the freezing cold and run to the bank. a foreign-currency expert. the stability began to emerge you have a mortgage credit, begin to build a business and there were lots of opportunities if you were smart, whether it was building steel doors or triple pane windows or amway. they deal in it. stores the commercial world exploded, restaurants, irish pubs, sushi, chinese, you name it and high end.

there was, things were growing. and the crash, the consumer goods were all important. food was largely imported. good food. other than cabbage or whatever. that came harder and harder. that was harder to get, not like the old days. in 2012 when everything began, the economy began to shrink, people's income shrink from 2012-2015 by 30% at least and i thought that would be the red

line. people bought it, ate hit, this will be good for us. we are going to become self-sufficient in food, even though vladimir putin and his government has not made it easier to create and grow businesses and hasn't been that generous to agriculture. nonetheless people believe it, want it. that redline has not been the red line i thought it might have been. >> congratulations, sounds like you crystallized so many things going on in modern russia that those of us have been in and out of the place for years are seeing going on. a magic wand and could change one thing about russia today,

what would it be? >> that is not my job. i would remove fear if i could because increasingly fear is too strong a word, caution has become the byword. that makes me sad. as a friend of mine said in 88, 89, i am out of the kitchen and never going back. back in the kitchens, conversations, that is where they happen. >> great answer on the spot. an analogous question to media coverage, gets to the question of media coverage, what about american foreign policy and implications, what do you think is the awareness and

appreciation or understanding of vladimir putin's domestic popularity and positions, and american foreign policy. >> tom graham had a pretty good piece today. foreign-policy. there are things we can do that we need to do with them. and in the soviet period, it was as bad on key issues. the russians know more about our sins, of which there are many, and we have so many problems of

our own i find our finger-pointing on human rights, we have to be more nuanced, more careful, not that i should ignore those things, there are other issues we can maybe work together. we are coming from a different priorities. and graham points out a lot of difficulties, we can't just lock them out. we can't ignore their concerns. the country has a huge nuclear arsenal. enormous natural wealth, do we really want to push towards china? there are lots of questions about what works for us. we have to be really clever how

we handle it. >> one more. >> thank you so much for having dedicated this time all these years, looking forward to the book. the day today reality, i wonder if you found much change in the education system, with the road learning approach all those years with the breakup of the soviet union with more critical thinking to be introduced into the schooling. that strikes me when i think of the propaganda that is accepted. >> really good question. looked like that sort of thing was changing. the road learning still

continues. charter schools i describe which -- they are taught to think. it is a special place, a fulbright scholar a couple years ago, the teacher training college, she was using ted talk to encourage development of english, what she was teaching and she chose one in particular analyzing the -- changes in the educational system here and it was a great discussion. she posed questions to the kids who are 19, 20, 21, and that is not for us, but the authorities.

this is 2014, it might as well have been 1981. it was so depressing. you see it again and again and again. >> the book is "putin country: a journey into the real russia". i highly recommend it, round of applause. [applause] >> if you didn't notice -- signed copies.

>> this weekend on booktv we are live with gerald forum who sits down with three hours with our monthly or call in program in depth, you can call, sweet is that booktv, email us at booktv@c-span.org and post on our facebook page with other programs to watch for this weekend, on afterwards face the nation, memorable presidential campaign moments, charles murray presents his plan to replace the welfare system with universal basic income. this weekend national book award finalist kathy o'neill and heather thompson discuss their books on big data and the attica prison uprising. booktv visits pueblo, colorado to talk with local authors and businesses literary sites. that is a few programs you will see on booktv this weekend.

for complete television schedule booktv.org. booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. >> the federal government's mobilization of the war on crime promoted a particular type of social control that signals target arrests of marginalized americans and subsequent creation of industries that support this control, among the central characteristics of domestic policy and the 20th century. the decision policymakers and officials, part of a larger coalition at the highest levels of government had immeasurable consequences for low income americans and the nation. but those choices may have been at different times a different political moment. ultimately the bipartisan consensus of policymakers

fixated on urban space and moving generations of young men and women of color from communities to live inside prisons. we can excuse actions and choices historical actors made as a product of their time or an electoral tactic but by doing so you avoid confronting legacies of enslavement that prevent the nation from realizing the promise of its founding principles. until recently the devastating outcomes of the war on crime have gone unnoticed. for many americans it appeared discrimination ended to do with the civil rights movement and the united states moved beyond exploitation. alongside tremendous growth of american law enforcement the last 50 years of formidable black middle-class surfaced, african-americans assumed positions of power with greater visibility from the rise of black mayors to display the black well for popular consumption to the presidency of barack obama. these promoted discourse of personal responsibility even

further making it seem systematic incarceration of entire groups of our general by citizens reflected the natural order of things. black americans have amassed substantial wealth, that does not mean historical racism and inequality endeded which is not news to many of you in this room today. african-americans grew more affluent after 1965. by the end of the 20th century the net financial aspect of black american households, $7448. only $448 above that, a fifth of white american households and black middle-class is concentrated in the public sphere and social services where mobility is tied to the extent of funding domestic programs. celebrating racial inclusion championed by african-american activists and their allies during black history month every

year, the fact that many critical reforms have been negated by national priorities remains unrecognized. tween 9 years after passage of the voting rights act, mass incarceration, the supreme court ruled unconstitutional to deny convicted felons the right to vote. they consistently removed the court's 1974 decision. 6 million americans most of whom served their sentences are deprived of the franchise. as at the part of racial disparities, criminal justice practices, estimated one out of 13 african-americans will not vote in the 2016 election due to a prior conviction. because of the disenfranchisement and policies behind it a key civil right gain of the 1960s has come undone. already questionable situation

worse, the us census counts people who are incarcerated and state and federal prison as residents of the county where they are serving time. and representation. the rural areas are home to minority of the us population, and the majority of prisons. urban americans favor democrats because of disenfranchisement and they favor republicans. and representation because of how the prison system works. mobility remain stagnant, urban neighborhoods are more segregated today. than they were before the civil rights movement. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.