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roel.vanhooydonck.nl · @roel.vanhooydonck.nl@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Our Dear Friends in Moscow 7/10

As a Dutch reader who followed MH17 and watched Europe's view of Russia harden, I wanted to know what Russia looks like from the inside, as told by people who lived it. Borogan and Soldatov deliver that. They have reported on Russia's secret services since the start of Putin's reign, and they now write from exile.

The book follows a circle of young colleagues, many from the Soviet-era newspaper Izvestia. Their paths diverge over the next quarter-century: one becomes a fixture in Putin's press pool, another a war correspondent, a third the troubled heir of an elite Soviet family with murky ties to military intelligence. The authors use these friendships to show how a country can drift apart. They trace Russia's path from the optimistic early 2000s through Medvedev's brief liberal interlude, the annexation of Crimea and the repressions that followed, to the attack on Ukraine. That gave me the backstory I was missing: the 1990s hope, the disappointments, and the point where the national mood turned.

Its strength is the human scale. Most of what we read in the Netherlands is geopolitics, and here the politics arrives through personal choices. Some friends compromise, some flee, and some become instruments of the state. The authors even ask themselves whether they ever really knew their former friends. That honesty makes the book credible, and it is tinged with grief rather than self-righteousness. It also helps that the authors are not outsiders pronouncing on Russia. They are Russians who watched their own generation split.

There are caveats. The authors are exiles writing about friends who sided with the regime, so the perspective is not neutral, and the book makes no claim to be. One reader notes that as a work of history it offers nothing new. If you want a systematic political history of Russia, look elsewhere. The value here is the intimate view from inside a generation, not new archival findings.

‘Our Dear Friends in Moscow’ is a thoughtful, sad and absorbing book. It is best read as an account of how an open, aspirational society turned into what the authors call a walled-in fortress, rather than as an analysis of Putin's system. It suits anyone who, like me, wants to understand the Russia behind the headlines. I'd recommend it.

#must-read #book

Published 2026-10-18 22:53 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere