The Kremlin controls all official narratives. In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, “everything is PR,” Pomerantsev writes. Indeed, in this bizarre world, nothing is true and everything is possible. The closest thing might be some nightmarish combination of Terry Gilliam’s film Braziland Peter Weir’s The Truman Show. It’s a portrayal of corruption at massive scale. And the tax police were much happier taking bribes than going to the trouble of stealing money that had been paid in the orthodox fashion.” Įveryone is implicated, everyone is complicit, tarnished, They’re also annoyed and maybe just a little bit ashamed. “… no one thought taxes would ever be spent on schools or roads.
Everyone keeps two sets of books because:
People have to bribe the traffic cops and the tax collectors. I won’t even try to describe in detail any of the incidents Pomerantsev narrates in the book, but running through all of them is an oppressive, universal corruption.Įveryone Pomerantsev encounters seems to be corrupt: women – girls really – from hinterland towns who come to the big cities to work as prostitutes in order to snare a rich man small time gangsters who transform themselves into movie producers and go on to make documentaries about their own criminal careers network TV executives who own production studios and pitch shows to themselves so-called “oligarchs” who captured huge swaths of the Russian economy during privatization following the collapse of Communism and finally Putin himself, a malevolent, omnipresent force whom Pomerantsev often refers to as simply “the President.” PublicAffairs, New York, 2014 Pervasive Corruption Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible:
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