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

by Peter Pomerantsev

Overview

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where 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 wild and bizarre 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610396004
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	11/10/2015
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	349,513
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Peter Pomerantsev is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics, an author and TV producer. He studies propaganda and media development, and has testified on the challenges of information war to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He writes for publications including Granta, the Atlantic, Financial Times, London Review of Books, Politico, and many others. His first book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House and Gordon Burns Prizes. It is translated into over a dozen languages.

Table of Contents

Act I Reality Show Russia 1

Act II Cracks in the Kremlin Matrix 77

Act III Forms of Delirium 139

Acknowledgments 239

Extra Reading 241

Editorial Reviews

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

"This is a gripping and unsettling account of life in grim post-Soviet Russia."—Washington Post

"A scintillating take on a twisted reality."—Prospect Magazine

"A patchwork tapestry that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief."—The Guardian

"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 Review

"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

"Enthralling... his exquisite rendering of mind-control techniques is chilling."—Times Literary Supplement

"Brilliant collection of sketches...powerful, moving and sometimes hilarious."—Washington Times

"Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written."—New Statesman [UK]

"[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."
—P.J. O'Rourke, World Affairs Magazine

"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

From the Publisher

The name "Vladimir Putin" is almost impossible to find in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. He usually appears only as "the President," lording over and lurking behind the tales of tragedy and absurdity in Peter Pomerantsev's captivating new book about modern Russia and its discontents.

The New York Times Book Review - Miriam Elder

09/01/2014
This debut from television producer Pomerantsev vividly describes the decade, starting in 2001, that he spent in Vladimir Putin’s “New Russia” pursuing a film school degree and TV work. Along the way, it reveals the complex truth about 21st-century Russia, with all of its new possibility, wealth, power, and corruption. Born in Kiev but raised in England by exiled Russian parents, Pomerantsev decided to move back to his native country, partly because he felt like he had “always been an observer looking in at Russia” and “wanted to get closer.” The book is divided into distinct parts—“Reality Show Russia,” “Cracks in the Kremlin Matrix,” and “Forms of Delirium”— suggesting the three-act structure taught in modern screenwriting manuals and emphasizing the feel of “performance” in the new Russia. Highlights of the narrative include Pomerantsev’s experiences producing a TV documentary called How to Marry a Millionaire (A Gold Digger’s Guide), interviewing gangster-turned-movie star Vitaliy Djomochka, attending a lecture by Kremlin propaganda mastermind Vladislav Surkov, and sampling the excess of Moscow nightlife. Sometimes horrifying but always compelling, this book exposes the bizarre reality hiding beneath the facade of a “youthful, bouncy, glossy country.” Agency: Melanie Jackson Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2014-10-05
Everything you know about Russia is wrong, according to this eye-opening, mind-bending memoir of a TV producer caught between two cultures.Born in Russia but raised in Europe, where he is now a London-based writer, Pomerantsev felt compelled to return to his homeland after the turn of the century: "I wanted to get closer: London seemed so measured, so predictable, the America the rest of my émigré family lived in seemed so content, while the real Russia seemed truly alive, had the sense that anything was possible." He got more than he bargained for, an experience far different from anything he had anticipated, though he did return from Russia with a wife and daughter (barely mentioned until the end, where he also acknowledges that he has "scrunched time mercilessly to tell my story"). Instead of a cohesive overview or chronological progression, the author records his impressions more like a kaleidoscopic series of anecdotes and vignettes, absurd and tragic, with characters that might be tough to believe if they were presented as fiction. There are the legions of strikingly beautiful women who blur the distinction between gold digger and prostitute. There are the Night Wolves, a motorcycle gang that is "the Russian equivalent of the Hells Angels" but who "are bikers who have found a Russian God." There is corruption at every level, from officials who prefer bribes to taxes to a criminal system in which "99% of those charged in Russia receive guilty verdicts." There is also reality TV, which demands heroes and happy endings, even when the subject is a ravishing model who was either murdered or committed suicide after indoctrination by a brainwashing cult, which the author suggests are as inherently Russian as vodka. And there is "the great war between Holy Russia and the Godless West" in a Russia that both emulates and reviles the crass excesses of capitalism. Not always cohesive, but the stylish rendering of the Russian culture, which both attracts and appalls the author, will keep the reader captivated.

Kirkus Reviews