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The Invention of Russia Arkady Ostrovsky

The Invention of Russia By Arkady Ostrovsky

The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky


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The Invention of Russia Summary

The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News by Arkady Ostrovsky

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

Fast-paced and excellently written. -New York Times

Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis. -The Wall Street Journal

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.

The Invention of Russia Reviews

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 Fiennes

About Arkady Ostrovsky

Arkady 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.

Additional information

CIN0399564179G
9780399564178
0399564179
The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News by Arkady Ostrovsky
Used - Good
Paperback
Penguin Putnam Inc
20170704
400
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Invention of Russia