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

I found little informative. Mostly just stories and situations but no deep insights.

In the era of fake news and hyper-information, I found this book appropriate. Pomerantsev's description of modern day Russia in Nothing is True plays out like a surrealist dystopian nightmare. Orwell or Huxley could never have predicted what Russia has become. The lines between truth and fiction becomes blurred. Truth itself becomes a flexible, malleable concept. Ideologies hold no weight in this new Russia. To understand Russia, understand the massive paradigm shifts it has faced recently. From the 80s-2000s Russia shifted from Communism to perestroika, to mafia-state, to a de facto authoritarian state and faux democracy. These massive shifts left the Russian in a state of constant shifting reality. People called heroes one day were called villains the next. Putin was able to become the figure of stability in this ever shifting landscape. Nothing is True is written out as a collection of stories from a variety of eccentric characters. We have gangsters turned superstars, suicidal models, corrupt bureaucrats-turned-businessmen, among many others. The reality told in each story seems flexible. Mysticism becomes blended with reality. History gets destroyed and rebuilt again. Television reports the news, but never the real news. Make no doubt about it, this book is an absolute page turner. What makes this book more scarier than any dystopian novel is the fact that this is happening now, today. It leaves us asking, could this happen to our own country?