A War Made in Russia

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 it with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.

Sergei Medvedev is a Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki and a Professor at the Charles University in Prague.

Introduction. Method in this Madness



Part I. The Anatomy of Violence

     The State Came After the Body

     Back to 1937

     The Final Diagnosis

     People as ‘The New Oil’

     The Zoos of Terror

     The Generator of Entropy



Part II. The Memory Crusad

     Kolyma by the Kremlin

     Memorial to Russian Resentment

     Thus Spake Zhirinovsky

     The Offering Made to the Ninth of May

     A Long Farewell to Empire


    
Part III. The War Nation

     The Zombie Apocalypse

     Revenge of the Underground Man

     The Z Virus

     Russia Inside Out

     Mobilization as Russian Fate

     The Age of the Sledgehammer

War as a National Idea

     The Unfinished Work of 1945


    
Notes

Index