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.
“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
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