The Invention of Russia

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WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE
WINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE
FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

An essential analysis to understanding Putin’s playbook and understanding the real Russian threat to World order and peace

How did a country that embraced freedom over twenty-five years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with the West? In this Orwell Prize-winning book, Arkady Ostrovsky reaches back to the darkest days of the Cold War to tell the story of Russia’s stealthy and largely unchronicled post-Soviet transformation.

A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin – his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. In his new paperback preface, Ostrovsky explores how Putin influenced the US election, the Trump Putin access, and shows how Putin’s methods – weaponizing the media and serving up fake news – came to enter American politics.“Anyone who has spent time in Russia over the past 30 years should be deeply grateful for Arkady Ostrovsky’s fast-paced and excellently written book. Too often, the story of post-Soviet Russia is presented through a Western prism as a clash of good Westernizers and evil reactionaries, or as a lamentation about what the West could, and should, have done once it “won” the cold war. Mr. Ostrovsky doesn’t waste time on that. A first class journalist who has spent many years covering Russia for The Financial Times and The Economist, he is also a native of the Soviet Union, with an instinctive understanding of how politics, ideas and daily life really work there…. For better or for worse, Mr. Putin has forced the world to reckon with a surly and combative Russia again. Mr. Ostrovky provides a much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable explanation of how it happened.”
– Serge Schmemann, The New York Times

“A real insiders’ story of Russia’s post–Soviet ’counterrevolution’—an important and timely book.” 
—Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag

“This dazzling book flags up the conflicts over ideas, morality, and national destiny in Moscow politics from Gorbachev to Putin—a triumph of narrative skill and historical empathy based on personal experience and rigorous research.”  
—Robert Service, author of Comrades! A History of World Communism
 
“Essential, timely, and always gripping… with the narrative flair of a true chronicler of the mysteries of the Kremlin.” 
—Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of Stalin

“How did Putinism come to pervade the psyche of the nation?… Ostrovsky’s sparkling prose and deep analysis provide a sweeping tour d’horizon of Russia’s malaise.”
– The Wall Street Journal
“Russia has always been a place where intellectuals, propagandists, viziers, and prophets have played a grand role. All the gangster-, KGB-, and oligarch-focused analyses of the country’s recent history have overlooked the men of ideas behind the tumultuous changes. Now comes Arkady Ostrovsky with a gripping intellectual history of the newspaper editors, ideologues, television gurus, and spin doctors who invented post–Soviet Russia.” 
—Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

“Ostrovsky is particularly good at hearing the nuances and seeing how identity, ideology and personal experience undermined hopes for democracy and reform.”
–The Washington Post
“A clear-eyed and honest account… informed, insightful and highly readable.”
–The Dallas Morning News

“Arkady Ostrovsky traces the descent from the heady days of 1991 with deep local knowledge, a journalist’s fluent style and sharp eye for detail, and wit. He places much of the blame on those who owned and dominated the media in the fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union.”  
—Dominic Lieven, author of The End of Tsarist Russia

“For a decade Arkady Ostrovsky has been the most insightful foreign correspondent in Moscow, and in The Invention of Russia he uses his deep understanding of the country he loves to tell the gripping, tragic story of its recent history. A brilliantly original, illuminating, and essential book.” 
—A. D. Miller, Booker short-listed author of Snowdrops

“A focused, bracing look at how the control of the media has helped plot the Russian political trajectory from dictatorship and back again. . . astute, accessible, and illuminating”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

“How post-Soviet Russia got from there to here makes a gripping story, told here brilliantly by a writer who watched it unfolding.” – Tom Stoppard

“A vivid account of the evolution of modern Russia… Ostrovsky shows how the liberal dreams of the Gorbachev era gave way to the authoritarian nationalism of the Putin period.” – Gideon Rachman, ‘Books of the Year’, Financial Times

“Moving and brilliantly detailed.” – Rachel Polonsky, ‘Books of the Year’, TLS (London)

“Essential, timely, and always gripping, Arkady Ostrovsky’s book explains today’s reinvention of Russia, from the fall of the USSR to the rise of Putin, by chronicling the power, the money and the media with the nuanced analysis of a Moscow veteran and the narrative flair of a true chronicler of the mysteries of the Kremlin.” – Simon Sebag Montefiore, author Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Russia has always been a place where intellectuals, propagandists, viziers and prophets have played a grand role. All the gangster, KGB and oligarch focused analyses of the country’s recent history have overlooked the men of ideas behind the tumultuous changes. Now comes Arkady Ostrovsky, with a detailed, gripping intellectual history of the newspaper editors, ideologues, television gurus and spin doctors who “invented post-Soviet Russia”. – Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

“I was gripped by Arkady Ostrovsky’s book. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to be more precisely informed about Russia today.” – Ralph FiennesArkady Ostrovsky is a Russian-born journalist who has spent fifteen years reporting from Moscow, first for the Financial Times and then as bureau chief for The Economist. He studied Russian theater history in Moscow and holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University. His translation of Tom Stoppard’s trilogy The Coast of Utopia has been published and staged in Russia. He has appeared on morning edition, CNN, the BBC and Sky News. The Invention of Russia won the Orwell Prize and was a Financial Times Book of the Year.US

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