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Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev
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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.
- Sales Rank: #17809 in Books
- Brand: Public Affairs
- Published on: 2015-11-10
- Released on: 2015-11-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .63" w x 5.38" l, 1.03 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2014: When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90s, the West rejoiced with the relief that came with the end of the Cold War and the possibility of an era of peace and cooperation. At the same time, its corporations and conglomerates trained a beady eye toward its newly opened markets, and a seemingly virgin economic landscape soon became home to icons such as Coke and McDonalds and Levi’s. But the door was open wide, and tagging along with big business were some seedier characters: organized crime, a youth-and-glamour-obsessed oligarchy, and an entertainment complex hungry for the new concepts of its Western counterparts. That’s where Peter Pomerantsev comes in. Born in Kiev but raised in Great Britain, Pomerantsev returned to Russia as a consultant to its burgeoning film and television—especially “reality” television—industries. What he found was a capitalist’s wet dream: an unfettered cash and service economy with no apparent limits on cash or available services--one where everything is possible, if you can pay for it. At the top of it all sits Vlad Putin, infusing the old TASS tactics with Hollywood flair to create a vision of a bare-chested (bear-chested?) virility and power, of both self and state. Pomerantsev finds himself gazing deeper into this looking-glass world—willingly and otherwise—and he finds it impossible to look away, as will his readers. This is not your father’s Russia, and yet it kind of is.--Jon Foro
Review
“A scintillating take on a twisted reality.”—Prospect Magazine
“Everything you know about Russia is wrong, according to this eye-opening, mind-bending memoir of a TV producer caught between two cultures… the stylish rendering of the Russian culture, which both attracts and appalls the author, will keep the reader captivated.”—Kirkus, STARRED
"Sometimes horrifying but always compelling, this book exposes the bizarre reality hiding beneath the facade of a ‘youthful, bouncy, glossy country.'"—Publishers Weekly
“It is hard to think of another work that better describes today's Russia; Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible may very well be the defining book about the Putin era. This might seem like excessive praise for a relatively short, non-academic memoir by a reality-TV producer now living in London, but it is justified by the author's gimlet eye and reportorial skill."—Commentary Magazine
“A brilliant, entertaining, and ultimately tragic book about not only Russia, but the West.”—Tablet Magazine,
Shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award
Longlisted for the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize
An Amazon.com Best Book of the Month, November 2014
“Captivating…keen observations.”—New York Times Book Review
“Sparkling collection of essays.”—Wall Street Journal
“Enthralling… his exquisite rendering of mind-control techniques is chilling.”—Times Literary Supplement
“This is a gripping and unsettling account of life in grim post-Soviet Russia.”—Washington Post
"Brilliant collection of sketches...powerful, moving and sometimes hilarious."—Washington Times
“Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written.”—New Statesman [UK]
“A patchwork tapestry that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief.”—The Guardian
"[A] tale of descending into and eventually emerging from Moscow's hallucinogenic reality.”—Foreign Affairs
“[A] riveting, urgent book ... Pomerantsev is one of the most perceptive, imaginative and entertaining commentators writing on Russia today and, much like the country itself, his first book is seductive and terrifying in equal measure.” —The Times (UK)
“This is the strangest book of note I have ever read… a dark and grotesque comedy of manners… His reporter's straightforward and unlimited curiosity, his willingness to plow and harrow the widest fields for facts, and his exacting descriptive details give him credibility. Plus, what he tells us is so incredible.” —World Affairs Journal
“A riveting portrait of the new Russia with all its corruption, willful power and spasms of unforgettable, poetic glamor. I couldn't put it down.”—Tina Brown
“Peter Pomeranzev, one of the most brilliant observers of Putin's Russia, describes a country obsessed with illusion and glamor, but with a dangerous, amoral core beneath the surface. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is an electrifying, terrifying book.”—Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag and Iron Curtain, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
About the Author
Peter Pomerantsev is an award-winning contributor to the London Review of Books. His writing has been published in the Financial Times, NewYorker.com, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Daily Beast, Newsweek, and Atlantic Monthly. He has also worked as a consultant for the EU and for think tanks on projects covering the former Soviet Union. He lives in London.
Most helpful customer reviews
204 of 213 people found the following review helpful.
Very Entertaining
By Thomas Reiter
As noted by other reviewers, the author is a very good story-teller and has included many entertaining and--to some extent--informative vignettes in this book.
I have lived in Moscow for many years and have been to many of the places mentioned in the book--unlike some other works I've read about Moscow, this author's descriptions and insights about places and events generally ring true. Moreover, he describes many interesting incidents/personalities that I was not previously aware of, so reading this book was certainly worthwhile for me. As a journalist, the author seems to have had a very good perch from which to observe a rapidly and constantly evolving Moscow.
Some other reviewers have criticized the book for not enabling them to "understand" Russia any better. Don't expect to read this--or any other--book and come away with an "understanding" of Russia, but at least it might help readers appreciate why Russia is such a difficult place to understand.
I enjoyed the book, so why not five stars? I had three basic concerns about the book:
1) Russia, and Moscow in particular, evolves rapidly and is changing constantly. Therefore, many of the author's observations seem a bit dated at this point. The author generally doesn't provide much of a timeline in the book, so it is often hard to determine whether he is writing about 2002 or 2012. Moscow in 2014 is a very different place from Moscow 2002 or Moscow 2012;
2) While many of the author's stories are very entertaining, the result is sort of a grotesque caricature of Moscow, which in fact is a huge and heterogeneous city, with millions of absolutely ordinary people very different from those described in this book. The author provides a good description of an interesting but freakish "froth" of people that provide good copy, but creates an impression that they, rather than ordinary citizens, define the city (which, admittedly, they do to some extent...). Therefore, as you read this book, bear in mind that millions of people are taking the subway/bus to work every day as book keepers, lawyers, account managers, etc., pretty much like everywhere else in the world...
3) In a few instances, the author seems to overdramatize things a bit. For example, he goes on and on about the constant fear of having your "documents checked", etc. In fact, I don't think I've had my "documents checked" even once in the last several years, and it is certainly not something I'm worried about (this kind of thing was indeed more common several years ago, hence my comment about some observations being somewhat dated...).
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Please Read This Book If You Want An Entertaining Primer On Modern Russia
By Philip L. Tudor
I hope this book has a lot of sales, not only to reward the author for a first class job, but also to give the reader an inside, and immensely entertaining, look at the cogs that make the Russia machine work.
Peter Pomerantsev was a producer for a Russian television station which gave him an inside pass to virtually anyplace he wanted to go in Russian culture, with the exception possibly of Putin's office (but Pomerantsev gets pretty close to there also). For those who have never seen Moscow, the author has the ability to make you feel you are in all parts of Moscow, usually its most expensive highrise center closest to the Kremlin, then past the endless concentric circular freeways around the center but further and further away from it, where you at last end up way out in the suburds in the muddy polluted yard of a complex of iconic Soviet block slum apartments and charmless cheaply made office buildings.
But the essence of the book is not the author's expert setting of the scene, its the inside look at how the society functions: the opposition political parties paid for and directed by the Kremlin; the male dominated world of the oligarchs living grandly off the graft, corruption and theft of the national assets, with how much any particular oligarch gets determined by how close he or she is to the Kremlin. Then, right when you believe you know how it all works, you meet a millionaire who earned his money honestly in the confusion of the conversion to "capitalism" (in quotes because Russia really only barely looks now like a capitalist state on the surface), who became legitimately terrified of being killed by customers on his accounts revievable list.
Then there are the women. The wives of the oligarchs seldom spend time in Moscow. They are living an exquisite jet set existence with a primary base in London, while the husbands toil away stealing in Moscow living in penthouses of new luxury highrises with littered halls. The wealthy wives have reason to worry about what their husbands are doing alone in Moscow, as the husbands are not alone. There is a whole cottage industry of mistresses who trot from oligarch to oligarch as their sugar daddies tire of them, and learn their skills at places such as "Golddiggers' Academy." One step down from the mistresses are the bar prostitutes who do the best when they don't look like prostitutes.
Pomerantsev shows us the active self help industry such as the US had in the late Seventies and Eighties (remember "EST"?), and how it caused the death of two supermodels. He also surprisingly shows Russia's domination of the international modeling industry.
What is certainly a wake up call is Pomerantsev's descrption of traditional "Russian values" in a very new state. He explains first off, that Russia has no positive role models to use as national historic heroes. After all, even Peter the Great was a tyrant who killed thousands building St. Petersburg. Now, the Putin supported values are racism directed towards anyone not pure Slav white, dangerous homophobia accompanied by torture, and supposedly Russian Orthodoxy though hardly anyone goes to church (with the exception of the biker gang Putin belongs to - the "Night Wolves."
The author also describes the latest hassle for the wealthy. When you are an oligarch in Russia, you really never own anything inside Russia, because the prevailing winds of favoritism in the government change constantly. Also, Russian oligarchs have learned their lesson from the aristocrats who brought back all their foreign invested money to Russian before WWI and the Revolution, and ended up penniless. Thus, there is a mad rush by oligarchs to invest as absolutely much as possible out of the country. Now, however, with the economy spinning out of control and sanctions with asset freezes, Putin has made it illegal to transfer any money out of Russia. Not only was a similar strategy used on a volunteer basis right before WWI, but this was also the rule of law in apartheid South Africa, and was a huge disinventive for whites to emigrate.
Pomerantsev is scared that Russia is a vision of the future and appears to see it growing in power. I disagree. The impression I got of the Russia Pomerantsev shows was of a skyscraper standing on an extremely shaky foundation.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Effective in presenting a terrifying orchestration
By George
A (highly readable, personalized) lesson in an multidirectional mass political subversion and social engineering through media and systematized corruption that you hope can't possibly be as intentional and capable as it seems to be - and the whole time you sense that you are peeking behind the curtain of your own existence; just a glimpse.
God help us.
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