An interesting view of modern russia through the lens of television, but ultimately a book that just makes the same point a whole bunch of times without particularly adding to its complexity with each restatement. Nagging throughout is a question of the author’s own integrity - if he was witnessing all of these things, thinking about them as critically as he claims to have been, then why did he stay so long? For the purposes of the text it is reframed as a sort of extended exercise in investigative journalism, but i think the work would have benefitted from a more honest reflection on what it meant to have been complicit in the construction of these media fantasies, to have been a part of the machine.