Adventures in Modern Russia

At the end of the twentieth century, Russia was only just emerging from the failure of the Soviet Union. And yet now, only a few decades later, there is the new Russia. Home to the new jet set: the richest, the most energetic, the most beautiful and the most dangerous.

Peter Pomerantsev takes us deep into the heart of modern Russia, from the 'Gold-digger' academies teaching women how to marry a millionaire, to the lives of Hells Angels, convinced they are messiahs, and the gangsters turned filmmakers. In this new world, home to a new form of authoritarianism under Putin, all values are changeable and everything is moving so fast it breaks all sense of reality.

Speaker biography:

Peter Pomerantsev, was born in Kiev and raised in England, and came to Moscow in the early 2000s to work in their fast-growing television and film industry. The job gave him first-hand access to every aspect of the country, and to the elite Russian rich in London and the west. He is an award-winning contributor to the London Review of Books and his writing has been published in the Financial Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Daily Beast, Newsweek and Le Monde Diplomatique, among others. He has also worked as a consultant for the EU and World Bank.

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