The Last Pioneer
Discovering the dark side of the Earth
I’m starting this project to help people understand what’s really happening in Russia and how it will affect your life tomorrow.
I was born in Moscow. In 1991, like the rest of my class, I joined the Young Pioneers – that was the youth organization in the Soviet Union, like boy scouts. It was a few months before the collapse of the USSR, making me one of the last pioneers in the Soviet sense of the word.
Little did I know then that one day I’d become the last pioneer of a worthier cause: independent journalism. In 2010 I became the founding editor-in-chief of Russia’s only independent TV channel, named TVRain. By that time, Putin had already destroyed all independent television. But we gave it a shot anyway. And we too were almost destroyed in 2014, just a few weeks before Putin invaded Crimea.
Ten years ago, I wrote "All The Kremlin’s Men," a bestseller about Putin’s inner circle. I spent years interviewing oligarchs, bureaucrats and politicians – those who had never revealed their stories before. Knowing this book to be all too relevant still, I never stop my work to discover what Putin’s court looks like.
Two years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I left Moscow because I felt morally obligated to do so. My mission is to call things by their names, but that’s forbidden in today’s Russia. There, till recently the land I called home, I’m now officially labeled as a “foreign agent.”
Last year, I wrote "War and Punishment," a book that debunks all of Putin’s myths about Russian and Ukrainian history.
Now, I teach in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, I’m Press Freedom Fellow at CUNY School of Journalism and I write columns for Der Spiegel and The New York Times, and am about to finish my new book about the collapse of the Soviet Union. As we see, the empire’s death throes didn’t end in 1991, but are still playing out.
As I follow the news from Russia and talk to my sources in Moscow (Dubai, Shanghai, Tel Aviv or Kyiv), I see that the gap between Russia and the West is widening. The longer the war continues, the less people in the West can understand what’s happening there.
But I’m sure people in the West shouldn't forget about Russia – because it’s closer than it seems. We have to be aware of possible scenarios for the near future. And the US should not repeat its tragic destiny – although, ironically, there's an obvious risk. And as I’m still a pioneer, let's explore together.