1장
When Moscow Called: A Cultural Insider's Memoir of Putin's Russia
In 2011, calling my parents to announce I was moving to Moscow felt like the ultimate betrayal of their immigrant sacrifice. They had escaped Russia in 1992, proudly displaying a portrait of Lenin in their refrigerator "to observe our American plenty and weep." Yet here I was, planning to return with compelling reasons: giving my infant daughter native Russian fluency, accepting a major promotion from staff writer to editor-in-chief of Russian GQ, and witnessing what seemed like Russia's historic moment. Moscow was experiencing unprecedented middle-class protests against Putin, organized by media professionals-some my friends. While writing municipal stories for New York magazine, I could be where history was unfolding. Russia offered a space-time shortcut to success for Americans, a place where things got done-badly perhaps, but done. Moscow desperately wanted to be New York, making it a playground of opportunity for New Yorkers like me.
2장
The Rootless Cosmopolitan's Return
I never actually lived in Russia proper. My family came from Riga, Latvia-a Baltic republic with Germanic architecture that maintained its separate identity even under Soviet occupation. As Jewish Russians in Latvia, we occupied a peculiar in-between space. Soviet Jewishness was purely ethnic-marked by surnames like Zilberman, physical features, and the stigma of "rootless cosmopolitanism" that guaranteed we'd never be considered fully Russian.
My Soviet childhood unfolded in a dreary communal apartment on Karl Marx Street, sharing space with alcoholics and madmen. Rather than finding solace in Russian literature (force-fed through Soviet ideology), I connected to Russian culture through its rock music-especially the 1980s Leningrad scene with its New Wave sound and ambitious lyrics about national identity.
When Latvia declared independence in 1990, it turned against "occupants"-Russians who'd arrived after 1940 and their descendants. My mother lost her librarian job despite her fluent Latvian. Anti-Semitism surged, and after being attacked for "looking Jewish," my family applied for U.S. refugee status. At sixteen, I arrived in Cleveland, Ohio in 1992, where I flipped burgers at McDonald's while being called a "commie" at school, my formal English making me an outsider among both Americans and fellow immigrants.
I obsessively exchanged lyrics with my friend Garros through mail, translating American songs while he kept me updated on Russian bands. At University of Michigan, I studied dramatic writing while other immigrants pursued practical fields. Even as I developed a new identity as a corduroy-wearing indie kid, I desperately tried convincing American peers that Russian rock was "just as good." Eventually, my need for a separate Russian identity receded. I wrote plays about American cultural figures and refused professors' suggestions to draw on my "immigrant experience." By 1998, I was in Brooklyn interning at the Village Voice, believing my Russian past had been successfully relegated to trivia status.
3장
Conde Nast's Russian Experiment
In August 1998, just as I was settling into Brooklyn, black-and-white billboards appeared across Moscow declaring "IN RUSSIA. AT LONG LAST"-heralding the arrival of Russian Vogue. Conde Nast's entrance represented a milestone in post-Soviet Russia's desperate quest to become a "normal country." The significance of a fashion magazine's arrival can't be overstated in a culture where print media had played an outsized role during glasnost.
Russia's anxious impatience to acquire Western trappings extended from crucial institutions to mundane consumer products. But the Russia of 1998 was profoundly abnormal-oligarchs had risen from crooked privatization schemes, crime syndicates thrived alongside security apparatuses, and most legitimate industry had collapsed. The 1996 presidential elections had already revealed the new Russia's original sin: placing stability over democracy through oligarch collusion, mercenary American advisers, and outright fraud to keep Yeltsin in power.
Conde Nast's Moscow operation was headed by Bernd Runge, an East German who spoke Russian and had studied at Moscow's diplomatic institute-later revealed to be a former Stasi agent codenamed "Olden." His pick for Vogue's first editor-in-chief was the worldly Aliona Doletskaya, who came with her own plume of KGB rumors. The publisher's headquarters sat atop a huge cold storage for furs-earning it the nickname "The Fur Fridge"-a facility that had served Moscow's elite women from czarist times through the Soviet era and now the oligarch era.
Just as Vogue's premiere issue went to press, Russia defaulted on its debt obligations on August 17, 1998. The ruble crashed to one-third of its dollar value, wiping out fortunes and forcing banks to close. Despite predictions that Conde Nast would pull out of Russia, the crisis paradoxically made Vogue an even more aspirational beacon.
By 2000, Vogue was successful enough to test a Men's Vogue supplement, which quickly spun off into GQ Russia, launching in March 2001 with Monica Bellucci on the cover above the odd exhortation "TO BECOME A WINNER." After several editorial changes, Nikolai Uskov transformed GQ into a professional, wealth-obsessed publication closer to Vanity Fair than American GQ. He ran it competently for eight years while courting oligarchs, eventually leaving in 2011 to run Snob, a media project funded by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.
4장
From Novelist to Man of the Year
My novel Ground Up was a satire about a yuppie couple destroying their lives opening a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Despite my resistance to writing about my heritage, my editor convinced me to make the male protagonist a Russian immigrant-a minor three-page rewrite. I deliberately avoided the immigrant writer wave happening at the time, prohibiting my publisher from mentioning English was my second language. The book was judged as perfectly average-except in Russia, where it became a bestseller, leading to Uskov naming me GQ Russia's Writer of the Year.
Post-Soviet Russian literature had evolved into two dominant modes: "extreme" realism depicting society's most wretched elements as metaphors for Russia itself, and phantasmagoric conspiracy tales about shadowy forces controlling the world. Writers like Viktor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin dominated, with Pelevin's novels revealing world governments as CGI cartoons, gay mafias, werewolves, and vampires. My childhood friend Alexander Garros explained this phantasmagoric tendency: "When you start writing out everyday Russian life, the absurdity overwhelms you... Russian reality is too phantasmagoric to fit into realist logic."
At the GQ Man of the Year awards, I found myself amid Moscow's social elite. The ceremony itself embodied Russia's performative cynicism. Host Ivan Urgant opened with a scripted rant against the falseness of such events: "Why are we lying to each other, acting like we don't know who's going to get these awards?" The presenters, including opposition politician Irina Khakamada (blacklisted from state TV) and celebrities Renata Litvinova and Nikolai Tsiskaridze, could barely hide their contempt for the proceedings. The air thrummed with collective self-loathing, relieved only by shared cynicism.
After winning and using my speech to advocate for filmmaker Valeria Gai Germanika's project, socialite Ksenia Sobchak unexpectedly kissed me on stage-a moment that generated seventeen hundred media hits by the next morning. The establishment embraced me as their new plaything-I was invited to events by Putin's "gray cardinal" Vladislav Surkov and nominated for "Kiss of the Year" on Love Radio. Meanwhile, my liberal Moscow friends were disgusted by my association with the despised mainstream media and figures like bestselling author Sergei Minaev, who had told me over steak at the afterparty: "You know, Misha, right now you have a chance to make a very decent career."
5장
The New Decembrists and Their Revolution
In December 2011, I sat in a Moscow bistro with young revolutionaries planning the next day's protest. Ilya Krasilshchik (editor of Afisha), Filipp Dzyadko (editor of Bolshoi Gorod), Katya Krongauz (Bolshoi Gorod editor and Krasilshchik's wife), and Ilya Faybisovich (Facebook page administrator) nervously discussed turnout expectations for their second major demonstration. Two weeks earlier, they'd organized 60,000 people at Bolotnaya Square-the largest protest Moscow had seen in over a decade.
These twentysomethings were fighting not just oppression but apathy. Putin's "power vertical" had methodically disabled all governance levers except the president's. By 2011, state-controlled television networks, Kremlin-appointed governors, and a rubber-stamp Parliament had created what officials called "sovereign democracy" and Russians mockingly termed "souvenir democracy."
The regime's genius was allowing just enough dissent to satisfy Western journalists without threatening power. Russians, with fresh memories of Soviet oppression and 1990s chaos, largely accepted disenfranchisement in exchange for economic stability, full grocery stores, and freedom to travel. The system operated through self-censorship rather than overt censorship-bottom-up cowardice rather than top-down oppression.
Meanwhile, the internet remained uncensored, seen by authorities as merely a toy for elites. Sites like LiveJournal and Facebook became alternative media for a new generation that barely remembered the Soviet Union. These "stability's children" had matured in political apathy, often channeling civic energy into the "theory of small deeds"-local improvements like cleaning up Gorky Park rather than challenging the government.
The revolution's organizers were precisely these apolitical hipsters-children of Moscow's intelligentsia who'd acquired media platforms at remarkably young ages. Krasilshchik became editor-in-chief of Afisha at 21, Dzyadko took over Bolshoi Gorod at 25, and Krongauz had been reporting since age 12. The same people who once recommended restaurants were now organizing a revolution, with Facebook RSVPs for tomorrow's protest climbing past 51,000.
6장
Editor-in-Chief: The Russian Media Labyrinth
On February 4, 2012, I landed in Moscow on a one-way ticket to begin my new role as editor of Russian GQ. Traveling light with just one suitcase full of my carefully curated "media-bro" uniform-checkered shirts, knitted ties, cuffed jeans, and several tweed blazers I'd decided would be my signature look to distinguish myself from my "ultra-slick Armani-wearing predecessor," Nikolai Uskov.
My first day at GQ Russia began with a rude awakening to Russian labor laws. The HR director explained I was forbidden from firing anyone-ever. Saying "you're fired" would trigger a twelve-month salary payout. Even accidentally implying termination could lead to an unwinnable lawsuit. This Soviet-era worker protection created an absurd dynamic where employees might deliberately perform poorly, hoping to provoke termination.
My editorial vision for GQ Russia combined two concepts I'd learned from American magazines: the "package approach" from Adam Moss's New York magazine (exhaustively covering topics from multiple angles) and Jim Nelson's American GQ's relentless quest for service content (always asking "what's my takeaway?"). I wanted to institute an actual feature well, redirect money from celebrity columnists to young journalists pursuing real stories, and build up the website to better cover Russia's rapidly changing landscape.
At my first all-staff meeting, I laid out these plans to a team that ranged from sleekly styled college graduates to a fifty-two-year-old cynic in a torn fisherman's sweater. They seemed nice enough with good rapport, but I quickly discovered a fundamental problem: these editors didn't actually edit. They wrote themselves, managed columnists, and organized things, but when it came to improving others' texts-their most literal job-most drew a blank.
My suggestion to introduce flexibility in the magazine's rigid structure was met with pitying looks. I soon learned why: half the magazine's one-page sections existed solely to serve adjacent advertisements. These "spetspozicii" (special positions) were valuable precisely because of their predictability-luxury advertisers didn't want their products appearing opposite something unexpected. The other half masked advertiser favors, with seemingly editorial content designed to please specific clients.
I needed a team optimized for craziness and change. My new deputy editor was Roman Volobuev, a film critic with a lazy eye and rakish disgust for everything around him. For the website, I hired Gosha Birger, a balding, bespectacled intellectual obsessed with regional hip-hop, obscure computer games, alternative porn, and meme curation. I recruited the anonymous duo behind @KermlinRussia, a wildly popular Twitter account satirizing the Kremlin, to become our star interviewers. With my new team assembled-a Casanova film critic, a polymath nerd, two masked opposition stars, and an American-raised son of a Soviet comic-I finally had the makings of a magazine.
7장
The One-Two Punch: Putin's Return and the Crackdown
As winter 2012 ended, the March 4 presidential election seemed superficially routine. Vladimir Putin's third term appeared assured, opposed by the usual pseudo-competitors: Communist Zyuganov, right-wing Zhirinovsky, and this time, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov as the designated "liberal" spoiler.
Prokhorov projected a contradictory image-playboy reputation yet ascetic lifestyle, sharing a modest apartment with his intellectual sister despite enormous wealth. He reportedly exercised six hours daily and wore billowing Brioni suits because "he wanted to be able to drop-kick people while wearing one." His investments spanned hybrid cars to nanotechnology, and he'd previously established tax residence in a tiny Siberian village.
The real question wasn't who would win, but whether Putin's government would accommodate protesters' demands or retaliate. Initially, the Kremlin appeared to offer concessions-Medvedev proposed simplifying party registration and restoring gubernatorial elections. Even Putin, who had dismissed dialogue with the opposition, suddenly offered to meet with its "nonpolitician" leaders.
Most surprisingly, Vladislav Surkov, Putinism's chief architect, was demoted from the presidential administration and gave an interview praising protesters as "the most productive part" of society. But his ominous reference to having "laws to deal with provocateurs" signaled the Kremlin's true intention: recrimination disguised as legality.
The Kremlin's retaliation began swiftly. Opposition TV shows were canceled, and the newly-arrived U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul was cast as Clinton's enforcer and liaison to the opposition. The harassment escalated from gentle criticism to coordinated disinformation campaigns and constant surveillance.
Election day arrived with theatrical predictability. At our local polling station, we watched as soldiers marched in formation, bypassing the line to vote-a visual metaphor for how little individual ballots mattered. The Central Election Commission quickly declared Putin's victory with 63.6% of the vote. That night, Putin's victory rally shook our windows, his speech dismissing the opposition as "political provocations aimed only at destroying Russia's statehood."
The inevitable post-election protest at Pushkin Square felt deflated. Despite electoral irregularities, the uncomfortable truth was settling in: Putin probably would have won anyway. The opposition faced an existential choice between populism or going underground. But at 9:40 p.m., after the protest permit expired, the regime showed its true face. OMON riot police moved in, arresting Navalny and roughly dragging Udaltsov from a fountain where he'd taken refuge. Just 22 hours after Putin's "tears of happiness," his most vocal critics were back in jail.
8장
Pussy Riot and the Culture War
The Kremlin's response to the protest wave evolved into all-out nativist paranoia. Unlike Soviet propaganda, the new anti-Western sentiment couldn't root itself in ideological conflict, so it morphed into a culture war against Western liberal values: rootlessness, atheism, feminism, homosexuality. The word "liberal" became central to a cluster of slurs denoting weakness and depravity.
Standing against this supposed Western corruption would be nationalism, clericalism, patriarchy, and "gosudarstvennichestvo" (statism)-a notion that erases distinctions between country and government. The Orthodox Church became the glue holding this construction together.
Pussy Riot, the actionist collective masquerading as a "punk band," had existed for only three or four months when they entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. On February 21, 2012, five women in bright tights and Orthodox headscarves entered the cathedral. Their carefully planned "punk prayer" lasted only forty seconds before security intervened, capturing just twenty seconds of footage that would become world-famous.
On March 3, the eve of Putin's reelection, three Pussy Riot members-Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alekhina, and Katya Samutsevich-were arrested and charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," facing up to seven years in prison. With Peter Verzilov's help, their case became a global cause celebre, drawing support from Western celebrities and Amnesty International.
I had initially dismissed Pussy Riot's actions as juvenile stunts optimized for Western press coverage, but watching the trial transformed my opinion. Seeing the three young women in that glass cage-the same one used for Khodorkovsky-delivering defiant yet reasoned speeches filled with biblical, classic, and modern quotes memorized without internet access, I suspected I was witnessing something as historic as the trials of Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky.
The Russian response remained mixed at best. Even liberals used dismissive language like "They should let those chicks go with a slap on the ass." The debate devolved into pointless syllogisms: What if it was your daughter? What if they did this in a mosque? The opposition, for all its anti-Putin fervor, remained deeply uncomfortable with activist women and pointedly avoided other forms of injustice like homophobia.
On August 17, the day of the verdict, I tossed my tennis racquet in my office and headed straight to the courthouse. The sentence: two years for forty seconds of dancing. Eighteen days per second. Putin later approved with slang: "zalepil im dvushechku" (slapped them with a deuce).
9장
From Crimea to Exile: The End of Independent Russia
On December 14, 2012, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, the first concrete U.S. sanction against post-Soviet Russia. The law targeted officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, an auditor who had uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials, police, and the Mafia.
Russia retaliated within two weeks with its own sanctions law, but with a cruel twist: it banned Americans from adopting Russian children. The "Dima Yakovlev law" was named after a Russian toddler who died in his American adoptive father's hot car. Despite no pattern of abuse among Russian adoptees in America, the government manufactured concern, with the Orthodox Church's spokesman claiming American families couldn't provide "truly Christian upbringing."
Putin's third term took on a morbidly farcical quality. The president seemed detached, spending time communing with animals-flying with cranes, riding horses, kissing pike fish. The Duma filled with demagogues like Elena Mizulina, who wanted Orthodox Christianity in the Constitution and children removed from gay parents. These "crazies" served as trial balloons for extreme policies while discrediting the very idea of parliamentary democracy.
My principles weakened in other areas too. After my principled refusal to accept gifts went unrecognized (while "opposition" editors freely took freebies), I began accepting luxury items like Louboutin shoes for my wife, justifying it by sending thank-you gifts that were themselves freebies. Soon I was "test driving" a free Jaguar like my predecessor and paying bribes to traffic cops to overlook my expired New York license.
Ukraine occupied a strange place in the Russian psyche. It was simultaneously a cautionary tale and an aspirational one-a provincial backwater that somehow seemed more confidently European. While Russia spent centuries searching for its identity, Ukraine's was self-evident, grounded in its rich soil.
By 2013, Ukraine's westward drift had accelerated toward an EU association agreement, but President Yanukovych abruptly halted the process after meetings with Putin, accepting a Russian loan with punitive terms instead. The people erupted in protest, establishing a tent city in Kiev's Independence Square (Maidan). What began with students protesting the broken EU promise evolved into broader demands as authorities responded with violence. By February 2014, dozens had died in urban warfare before Yanukovych fled to Russia and the Maidan claimed victory.
The day after the Sochi Olympics closed with its European-themed ceremony, pro-Russian rallies began in Crimea. Within days, "green men"-Russian soldiers without insignia-seized key buildings. The annexation took just three weeks, with a referendum held under Russian guns on March 16 resulting in Crimea joining the Russian Federation. Simultaneously, Moscow fueled separatist movements across Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, transforming local rebellions into "people's republics" with Russian mercenaries declaring themselves warlords.
Moscow's denial of involvement in Ukraine represented a new kind of deception-the "power lie" whose obviousness was part of its message. Putin knew everyone knew he was lying, turning the lie into a brash challenge to the West. Russians knew Putin was lying too-and approved. The public and president were in on the same joke.
10장
Screenwriting in the New Cold War
As Russian journalism collapsed, many talented writers migrated to screenwriting. I juggled writers' rooms for "Londongrad" and "Rushkin" between Moscow and Berlin. When "Rushkin" hit creative challenges, I recruited the Kermlins (Arseny Bobrovsky and Katya Romanovskaya) to help. On "Londongrad," I discovered Russian TV remained a producer's medium where writers were seen as disposable hired help. I fought this mentality, confronting crew members who were careless with English dialogue because they assumed no one outside Russia would ever watch.
Russia repositioned itself as a haven for everyone opposed to the liberal global order, welcoming both far-right nationalists and conspiracy-minded leftists. Its English-language propaganda arm RT crafted a "unified manifesto of paranoid illiberalism" where Alex Jones and Julian Assange were equally welcome. In France, Russia cultivated both Marine Le Pen and anti-fracking environmentalists.
Surprisingly, Russia's aggressive backward turn brought me relief rather than despair. Everything felt clearer, simpler-Russia had admitted it didn't know how to be a country without shepherding surrounding nations. Being the international villain again made sense, lending relevance to its literature, pop music, and dissidents. My Moscow celebrity receded as I focused on meaningful work in Berlin, breaking the cycle of vanity searches and depression.
The liberal exodus from Russia continued. Former Afisha and Strelka Institute cofounder Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper spent most of his time in London, as did restaurateur Alexei Zimin, who ran a vodka bar in SoHo. Novelist Vladimir Sorokin moved to Berlin, while theater director Kirill Serebrennikov split time between Moscow's Gogol Center and Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg. The exodus wasn't the tearful permanent departures of the 1990s, but people "electing to sit a few things out" during Russia's economic downturn and rightward turn.
On March 5, 2015, while Londongrad was filming, Soulless 2 was released in theaters. Ryvkin and I had created Russia's first corporate thriller, with the state portrayed as the evil corporation. On the day of the premiere, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was being buried, having been gunned down near Red Square on February 27 while working on a report about Russia's involvement in Ukraine.
11장
Berlin Reflections: Russia's Past and Future
Our Berlin home stands near the Wall memorial where people once risked death jumping to freedom. Walking between the memorial's iron posts-once a lethal act, now a simple step-I wonder what Moscow would look like if it fully confronted its brutal past instead of repackaging it as national greatness. Though my three years in Moscow failed to resolve questions about my own Russianness, my daughter's native language is clearly Russian-I've successfully "kicked the identity can down the road" to the next generation, who will hopefully get a better world and a better Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to deteriorate. Nemtsov's murder remains unsolved, with even attempts to place a memorial plaque on the bridge where he was killed being thwarted. The press faces sixteen new restrictive laws in 2015 and ninety-seven more in 2016, while economic troubles have killed respected publications like Kommersant's weekly magazines. The government's assault on artistic expression has grown both more intense and more chaotic, as various zealots-from Cossacks to Nicholas II devotees-clash with the Kremlin's own culture warriors.
Alexei Navalny, now the opposition's sole leader, faces constant legal harassment while his YouTube investigations into high-level corruption have expanded to include Prime Minister Medvedev. The new youth protests that began in March 2017 essentially function as Navalny's campaign events, with the horizontal structure of the earlier protests abandoned.
The militarization of Russian identity continues with a new monument to Kalashnikov and state-funded films glorifying the Crimea annexation. According to polls, Russians now rank the Crimea annexation as their proudest historical moment after World War II victory, surpassing space exploration and literary achievements.
Since November 2016, I feel no more or less alienated than the Russian protesters of 2011 or liberal Democrats worldwide-we're all denizens of a new, uncertain world that "feels a lot like Russia." Ironically, Russia finally achieved the global attention it craved, with Putin's face on every magazine cover and his name in every politician's speech. My inbox fills with Western offers to write about Russian hackers, spies and assassins-ideas where Russophobia sometimes borders on racism.
I don't know what difference Russian compromise of the US government makes, because being compromised by Russia simply means being compromised by greed and insecurity-coating self-interest in righteous blather, focusing on the bare minimum, copying what works, and embracing the illusion that consequences don't exist. This cynicism amounts to defeatism, but whoever resists this illusion will eventually win.
