Book Review: Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (2014). Peter Pomerantsev.

A perfect companion piece to Red Notice by Bill Browder and The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder (both previously reviewed here), this book was written by a western filmmaker and journalist, based on his ten years in Russia during the early post-Soviet era.

Pomerantsev set out as a young film maker and journalist in the exciting years of Russia in transition in the early post-Soviet 2000s, but learned (as did Bill Browder) that he was trying to operate based on assumptions about the existence of western-style rules and open values in a society where the lessons of a century of totalitarian rule, and hundreds of years of Russian autocracy, could not be so easily overlooked or overcome.

He describes the ways in which Putin and the oligarchs came to power, by using state power and the courts to steal and centralize assets, after the Soviet collapse caused the sell-off of state businesses. He vividly depicts the way the early "gangster" behaviors and style of tough young men in Moscow in the 1990s gave way to the power of the oligarchs; the toll taken on the beautiful young women trying to survive in a predatory macho environment utterly controlled by a new class of strong men; and other social aberrations, such as the widespread rise of cults and conspiracy theories, all supported by and promoted through Putin’s state control of the news media.

A chilling social history of contemporary Russia, and a shocking wake-up call to those of us who were not paying attention to the dissolution of the dream of a more open and democratic Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, and the danger posed by the rise of Vladimir Putin as a new autocrat of the Russian nation. Recommended.