‘Our Dear Friends in Moscow' Review: Propaganda and the Press
Neither of them could have imagined this would be their fate when they started out as young reporters in 2000. Having come of age in the 1990s, they had believed that they belonged to a new generation of Russians who were committed to democracy and human rights, only to see their friends reject these ideals in favor of authoritarianism and anti-Westernism. 'Our Dear Friends in Moscow' is a searing and sobering book that captures the profound cynicism and xenophobic nationalism that define contemporary Russia.
'Our Dear Friends in Moscow' tells two interconnected stories. One is intensely personal and recounts the relationships among Mr. Soldatov, Ms. Borogan and several fellow journalists: Evgeny Krutikov, the scion of a once-elite Soviet family; Petya Akopov, an intellectual with a fascination for repressive regimes; Zhenya Baranov, a war correspondent; and Olga Lyubimova, a TV host with connections to the reactionary film director Nikita Mikhalkov. In the early days, their differences seemed unimportant. They worked and socialized together. They partied, drank, smoked and debated the 'accursed questions' about Russia's troubled past and murky future.
Things changed once Russian president Vladimir Putin began to suffocate the independent media and civil society in the early 2000s. For a while it seemed that the regime would allow liberal journalists some space in which to work. 'Many believed that this coexistence could last for years and that one day Putin would just be gone,' the authors write. Then, they add, 'things would go back to 'normal'—whatever that meant.' But Mr. Putin did not go away, and the repression intensified. Mr. Soldatov, Ms. Borogan and their friends had to decide whether to resist and join the opposition or to surrender and join the Putin propaganda machine.
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