Swimming the Volga: A U.S. Army Officer’s Experiences in Pre-Putin Russia

Product Description

Swimming the Volga is a personal eyewitness account of day-to-day life in a provincial Russian city during a remarkable period in world history just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and before the names Putin and Russia became inseparable.

After seventy years of tyranny and oppression under a series of iron-fisted regimes, Russia turned away from its failed social and political experiment. It took its first steps toward adopting a democratic and free-market system under perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness).

During Zwack’s regular visits to Kalinin, he witnessed firsthand ordinary people’s lives turned upside down by forces they had little or no control over. In the Wild West of the ‘new’ Russia, a few enterprising Russians quickly figured out how to make vast amounts of money-usually illegally. A nascent mafia mastered the art of bringing necessary and desirable goods to market and extracting ‘protection’ money from new businesses. Most Russians, however, watched their life savings disappear in two massive devaluations of the ruble in the 1990s.

Written in the days just before the names Putin and Russia became inseparable, Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack (Ret)’s Swimming the Volga is a unique time capsule of a remarkable period in world history. The final chapter of the Cold War ended with the hijacking of Russia’s future by rapacious financiers, pyramid schemes, and a new criminal element setting the stage for Putin’s arrival, and with it, a more assertive and revanchist Russia. Along the way, the cast of memorable characters in the story reveals their very human dreams, ambitions, fears, missteps, cynicism, resilience, and disillusionment.

What will make Swimming the Volga stand out in the marketplace is the author, who lived and experienced Russian culture firsthand. His many accomplished years of high-ranking military authority, extensive knowledge and grasp of the language and culture, and brilliance as an educator, speaker, and writer. Former Attaché to the Russian Federation, Zwack is a current Global Fellow at The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russia Studies at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. No one is more qualified to write and speak on this subject than him.

Review

“One of the great joys of serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation was working with General Peter Zwack. Every day, he demonstrated a deep commitment both to serving our great nation and to understanding Russia. The latter helped him do the former. Swimming the Volga* shows just how deep into Russian society, history, and culture Peter dug. Jumping from the analytic to the personal with ease, it’s a brilliant story.”
-Ambassador Michael McFaul
U.S. Ambassador to Russia 2012-2014
Author of Cold War, Hot Peace; An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia

“Loaded with great insights and stories from his days before serving as U.S. Defense Attaché in Moscow and from his deep involvement with Russia, Brigadier General Zwack brings the past alive to help us understand what Putin is doing today. It is very rare to have pages filled by someone who really knows Russia and knows how to write about it.”
-Leslie H. Gelb
President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations

*Swimming the Volga is a lively, short memoir of life in the small Russian city of Tver (110m from Moscow) as seen through the eyes of a young captain in the U.S. Army during a summer program on Russian culture and language in 1989.
Over a ten- year period, Zwack continued his visits to Tver, even as he rose in rank and responsibility. In return, the city provided him with a unique window into the upheavals of Russia in the 1990s. Through Zwack’s stories, we meet a set of Russian friends he met at the start of the difficult days in the Soviet Union, through the changes of today’s Russia in their lives-as well as the eternal characteristics of the Russian people. An informative and entertaining account by an unu