The Invention of Russia

Winner of the 2016 Orwell Prize

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev launched Perestroika, opened Russia up to the world, ended the Cold War, and gave his people freedom. The demise of the Soviet Union offered hope that Russia would become a 'normal', 'civilised' country, embracing Western values of democracy and the free market. Thirty years later, Russia emerged as a corporate state, overcome by imperial nationalism, fanned by its authoritarian president Vladimir Putin, who smashed the post-Cold War order and ignited a war on the borders of Europe.

How did a country that embraced freedom over twenty-five years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with the West? In this Orwell Prize-winning book, The Invention of Russia, Arkady Ostrovsky reaches back to the darkest days of the Cold War to tell the story of Russia's stealthy and largely unchronicled post-Soviet transformation.

Ostrovsky's knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the rise of Vladimir Putin and to reveal how he pioneered a new form of demagogic populism. In a new preface, he examines Putin's influence on the US election and explores how his methods—weaponising the media and serving up fake news—came to enter Western politics.