The Invention of Russia

April 11, 2016
In this insider’s account of the Soviet Union’s collapse and its reemergence as new Russia, Ostrovsky, a Russian-born journalist, recounts how Russian politics, business, and media have melded into a powerful, dangerous myth-making apparatus unlike anything in the West. The primary figures here are Russia’s elite, the ideologues and editors whom Ostrovsky interviewed mostly between 2004 and 2014. He spends the book’s first half exploring perestroika and the subsequent stumbles into a market economy during the early 1990s. He also ably portrays the media moguls and unscrupulous TV personalities who brought first Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin to power. Ostrovsky’s reporting is heavy on analysis and reliant on secondhand accounts. He argues that Russia has a centuries-old habit of confusing fact and myth, and he probes the souls of propagandists as they bid farewell to Communism while their irreverent progeny start up capitalist tabloids. Viewed through the Russian lens, the events of recent years look startlingly different. While the media flexed muscle under Yeltsin, Putin won the long game. During coverage of the annexation of Crimea, for instance, the media invented a pro-Russian narrative “using fake footage, doctoring quotes, and using actors.” Ostrovsky’s dizzying tale takes its own myth-like form, and Western readers will quickly learn to take everything in this book with a grain of salt. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management.

February 1, 2016

A Russian-born journalist who has spent 15 years reporting from Moscow, first for the Financial Times and then as bureau chief for the Economist, Ostrovsky is primed to tell us what has happened to Russia since the fall of communism. He portraysa country ruled by lies that's actually more cynical than the Soviet Union--and that's on a collision course with the United States. Expect extended coverage; apparently, David Remnick will review in The New Yorker, which says something.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016

Journalist Ostrovsky, Russia and eastern Europe correspondent for the Economist and the newspaper's former Moscow Bureau Chief, applies his background to chronicle more than 25 years' worth of Russian history, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Included are well-documented insights into generational differences that illuminate how and why the first post-Joseph Stalin generation, led by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1990s, dissolved the Soviet grip on economic, journalistic, and political policy; while the current age, under the rule of Vladimir Putin since 2012, has reinstated total control of the nation, viciously silencing critics. By analyzing the changing tone and content of newspapers and television programming, Ostrovsky defines the media's role in shaping, rather than reflecting reality. He convincingly shows that storytelling by the Russian press has been the primary driver of public support during these turbulent years. VERDICT As David Greene did in Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia, Ostrovsky succeeds in depicting Russia to non-Russians and documenting the extent of Putin's power. Readers interested in international affairs, Soviet history, and the power of the media will appreciate this timely book. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/15.]--Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.