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Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

Peter Pomerantsev

Finish date: May 17, 2015

Why we're reading this: An inside look at the total corruption of the Russian political system, its obsession with wealth and the…more
[close] An inside look at the total corruption of the Russian political system, its obsession with wealth and the self-delusion that reality is whatever they want it to be.

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Sep 18, 2014 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, reality, male, russian, post-soviet

Peter Pomerantsev takes us through the heart of modern Russian through reality television. Assigned to create a reality show, his real life experiences there reveal the new Post-Soviet Russia. At times, a strange caricature of US media and at others showing the same secretive dictatorial nature of the Soviet Past, Pomerantsev reveals all. The media can heavily sculpt this image and it is working overtime in Russia to do just that.

What happens in these stories is an attempted transformation of t ...more

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Sep 02, 2015 Christian rated it it was ok

Shelves: current-events-issues, politics, russia, media

I picked this one up to try something a bit different. On the whole, it is an ok read, easily skimmed through. I found particularly interesting the section about how the increasingly authoritarian government under Putin has cleverly incorporated aspects of western media and post-modern language to create a circus atmosphere that cements the regime through entertainment and cultivating a tame and marginalized "opposition". Other parts of the book focused on bizarre stories that could occur in any ...more

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