Her phone rang, and I heard one side of a conversation that was presumably fraught on the other end. Lyudmila's tone was soothingly routine. 'He's kidnapped the kid?. . . And where's the mother? . . . And there's a one-year-old sister? . . . Do we know where the grandparents are? . . . Are there any sober family members? . . . OK, I will raise the alarm and do everything I can.'
She turned to me, with a just a hint of weariness infusing her usual enthusiasm. 'This is a very difficult part of town.'
She enquired as to the subject of my book; I told her it was about the elevation of the war victory to a national idea in Russia, and she beamed a smile of genuine warmth. She was delighted I would be writing about such an important topic. If only more Westerners understood the importance of the Soviet war effort, she said. I thought about her long hours of work in the school, trying to use patriotism and war memory to imbue a sense of meaning into the difficult lives of these kids, and felt a pang of guilt at the fact that the books contents would be sharply at odds with what she doubtless had in mind.
But even though much of the Soviet war story really was inspiring, and millions like Lyudmila took to its promotion in good faith, I still found the broader cynicism hard to swallow. Putin had faced a truly difficult task, when he took office in 2000, to pull together this creaking, wounded nation. But it was now seventeen years into his rule over Russia. During that time, his old childhood judo partners, his former KGB pals, and the trusted associates he had parachuted into various governmental jobs had amassed fortunes and moved into vast palaces outside Moscow, hidden from the public behind high forest-green fences. Many of them badmouthed the West in public but purchased real estate in London, Miami, or the South of France. They spent their weekends at lavish parties and their holidays on yachts; the wife of one deputy prime minister flew her pet corgis around Europe on a private jet. Meanwhile, here in the Russian heartland, people were drinking themselves to death on poisoned bath fluid because they couldn't afford vodka, while being bombarded with never-ending tales about the glory of a victory that had occurred seventy-two years previously. On state television, shrill news bulletins, shouty talk shows, and bombastic documentaries drilled into viewers that the 'return of Crimea and the newly assertive Russian foreign policy should be a new source of pride. The international outcry and sanctions were passed off as sour grapes from foreign powers jealous of Russia's resurgence. The presidential election was shifted to 18 March 2018, the fourth anniversary of the official annexation of Crimea, to give a patriotic undertone to the electoral 'contest'.
Putin had largely succeeded in his mission to create a sense of nation and rally Russia around a patriotic idea. But instead of transcending the trauma of the Soviet collapse, his government exploited it, using fear of political unrest to quash opposition, equating patriotism' with support for Putin, and using a simplified narrative of the Second World War to imply Russia must unite once again against a foreign threat. Even if protests against the current obscene levels of corruption become a serious threat for Putin, or one day even lead to a change of government, the patriotic rhetoric of his years in charge is likely to endure. These ideas have formed the basis for the upbringing of a whole new generation of Russians, and they will continue to influence the collective Russian psyche long after Putin finally departs from the Kremlin.
Russia's glorious past has become a national obsession, but a prosperous future still seems a long way off.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I have used Kiev and Odessa instead of Kyiv and Odesa, as they are accepted English spellings. For towns in Russophone areas of eastern Ukraine I have used Russian names, so Konstantinovka and not Kostiantynivka, etc., as these were the names most often used by the locals.
I have occasionally changed people's names and, on a very small number of occasions, amended minor details, in cases where people asked me not to use their real names, or where I took my own decision to protect a person's identity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to Masha Kortunova for the long hours of transcription and other help; and to Veronika Dorman, Roland Oliphant, Tom Parfitt, Masha Turchenkova, Elena Volochine, and Emma Wells for being good company and thoughtful colleagues on reporting trips.
I'm thankful to Ksenia Bolchakova for generosity with contacts and ideas for Magadan, and Sergei Raizman for showing me around the city. Pavel Polian was helpful on the deportations, Bryan Glynn Williams on the Chechens and Crimean Tatars, and Tom de Waal on Chechnya. Lana Estemirova helped me on some Chechen-language issues. Many people at Moscow Memorial were helpful on various aspects of the Soviet period. Simon Shuster dug out useful audio from Belbek.
In Kiev, Kristina Berdynskykh has always been wonderfully generous and collegiate; Anastasia Magazova was also very helpful with contacts in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine. In Donbass, there are many people who helped at various times with logistics, transport, and safety on both sides of the lines to whom I owe thanks.
I am extremely grateful to Essie Chambers, Amie Ferris-Rotman, Sally Foreman, Suzy Hansen, Michael Idov, Polly Jones, James Lanman, Maria Lipman, David Marples, Sophie Pinkham, David Priestland, Elena Racheva, Douglas Smith, Nargis Walker, and Joshua Yaffa for the time they spent reading parts or all of the text and giving extremely valuable comments and suggestions. Particular thanks to Sarah Topol, who valiantly ploughed through an early draft.
It has been an honour to work for The Guardian, the newspaper I grew up reading and always wanted to write for. Jamie Wilson has been a perfect foreign editor, giving me the latitude to pursue the stories I found interesting, and providing guidance without interference. Everyone else on The Guardians foreign desk has been nothing but a delight to work with. I also owe much gratitude to Andrei Zolotov Jr for giving me a chance to start out in journalism in Moscow back in 2005.
Daniel Kunin and Kirsty Giles gave me places to write in, respectively, Tusheti and Crystal Palace. Spending three weeks at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire was an amazing opportunity and helped me get the draft finished, and Simon Morrison was kind enough to put me up for ten days at Princeton to do the final edits. Tracy Bohan and Kristina Moore at Wylie, and David McBride and Claire Sibley at Oxford University Press have helped me through the process of putting the book together.
Finally, I must mention my enormous debt to Marina Akhmedova, one of my oldest friends and my long-standing reporting partner. Her generosity with time and contacts has been absolutely invaluable. We often disagreed about the things we saw, but without her, many of the characters featured in this book would never even have spoken to me.
NOTES
Chapter i
Gevorkyan, Timakova, Kolesnikov, First Person, 78-79.
Gevorkyan, Timakova, Kolesnikov, First Person, 80.
Talbott, The Russia Hand, 197.
There is compelling circumstantial evidence that these explosions may have been a 'false flag' operation carried out by elements of the state. See, for example, Satter, Darkness at Dawn.