*Putin's Utopia: 21st Century Russia and Propaganda*

2018/07/24

"Nabokov once described a species of butterfly that had to learn how to change its color in the early stages of its development to hide from its natural enemies. Those enemies have long since gone extinct, yet the butterfly still changes color for the pure pleasure of transformation. Something similar has happened to the Russian elite." This description appears in a chapter discussing the mysterious personality of Surkov, the right-hand man of Putin, the founder of the new "authoritarianism" regime.

Born in Kyiv in 1977, the author is a British citizen who went into exile from the Soviet Union shortly after birth with his Jewish dissident parents. He spent ten years from 2001 in Russia, working for a television station, a period that perfectly coincided with Russia's oil bubble and the continuation of Putin's rule. Based on his observations during that time, he vividly depicts a cross-section of Russian society, the roots of the Russian mentality, and Russia's world-leading propaganda and theatrical politics, for which he was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Timothy Snyder, who visited the Juku to give a lecture last January, even listed it as a must-read in his book *On Tyranny* (both the original and my translation published in 2017).

The dozens of Russians who appear are truly diverse, ranging from oligarchs who have become the new jet set to a prostitute happy to have gotten her sister out of Islamic extremism so they can work together, a former gang-member film director, a supermodel preyed upon by a cult, and a young man nearly dying from hazing in the military. Furthermore, the reporting covers various parts of Russia, which spans eleven time zones.

The world the author depicts is likely dystopian: a Russian society where one cannot survive without bribes (money) and connections, spin control, the good old Moscow being destroyed by land redevelopment because everyone wants to be as close to power (the Kremlin) as possible, money laundering by the wealthy, and so on. However, his gaze toward individual human beings is warm, and the various episodes are filled with irony and humor, giving the impression of reading an excellent short story. As mentioned in the acknowledgments, I once again received insights from Naoki Suzumura regarding German and Nordic relations. I write this while remembering the smile he showed me when I delivered this book to his bedside.

*Putin's Utopia: 21st Century Russia and Propaganda*

Peter Pomerantsev (Author), Toshiho Ikeda (Translator)

Keio University Press

324 pages, 2,800 yen (excluding tax)