In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia’s war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin’s obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin’s regime and of Russia’s entire imperial history. Building on his prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Medvedev argues that it was not only Putin that started this war, but Russia itself, which, by and large, has imagined and embraced it with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.
Also available as an audiobook.
Also available as an audiobook.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Method in this MadnessPart I. The Anatomy of Violence
The State Came After the Body
Back to 1937
The Final Diagnosis
People as ‘The New Oil’
The Zoos of Terror
The Generator of Entropy
Part II. The Memory Crusad
Kolyma by the Kremlin
Memorial to Russian Resentment
Thus Spake Zhirinovsky
The Offering Made to the Ninth of May
A Long Farewell to Empire
Part III. The War Nation
The Zombie Apocalypse
Revenge of the Underground Man
The Z Virus
Russia Inside Out
Mobilization as Russian Fate
The Age of the Sledgehammer
War as a National Idea
The Unfinished Work of 1945
Notes
Index
