In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia’s war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin’s obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin’s regime and of Russia’s entire imperial history. Building on his prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Medvedev argues that It was not only Putin that started this war, but Russia itself, which, by and large, has imagined and embraced the war with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.
Medvedev examines the ways in which three building blocks of Russia’s identity – the cult of violence, the cult of memory and the cult of war – have combined to produce this war, a war which has come to represent a national idea that Russia has been seeking to realize since the demise of the Soviet Union. He shows that the brutal way this war is fought is not an excess but the norm, a true embodiment of Russia as it is, with its rule of violence, terror and disregard for human life and dignity.
