Publisher: PublicAffairs (November 11, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1610394550
ISBN-13: 978-1610394550
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 inches
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Book Synopsis
In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show.Professional killers with the souls of artists, would be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell’s Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the glittering, surreal heart of twenty first century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship far subtler than twentieth-century strains—that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.
When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.
Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Book Review
“Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” reads very close to the title. In many ways the author’s accounts are interesting and thought provoking but they are, in the end, part of his limited, narrow views of what he himself witnessed and experienced, rather than a detailed monograph/study of the evolution of Russia in the past decade. In many ways what he experienced is reflective of the position Russia has been put in to by the Putin administration. With the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the 1990s, many ‘new-age’ ideas were attempted by politicians and TV networks (all too often taking relics from the west and transporting them, after some cosmetic changes, to Russia to rake in as much cash as possible). While “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” reads easily enough, tackles a lot of relevant and interesting issues (politics, the military, television, etc.), it’s still a bit too cynical for my liking and attempts to make a study of a few anecdotal stories. It’s a great read for someone familiar with Russia and Moscow today, showcasing a variety of people and events, but definitely not something to base all your ideas on what all of Russia is like today.
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