Pravda Ha Ha

I was in West Berlin the day the wall fell and earlier that year I had visited Moscow, I have never visited a reunified Germany or a dissolute USSR and after reading this book I am not in a hurry to visit Moscow anytime soon, this book should be sold in the horror section because although the tale is engaging and interesting the story is horrific

Join historian and travel writer Rory MacLean as he retraces backwards a journey made in the euphoric year of 1989 from Berlin to Moscow. Now 30 years later he makes both a physical and metaphysical journey through the lands that were once part of the unlamented (but not by all) Soviet Union. We are taken on a journey through Russia itself, to former soviet states and struggling Russian enclaves meeting along the way an eclectic collection of colorful characters. 

Layer by layer a picture is painted of lands that owing to their geography were subject throughout history to wars, conquest, ever changing borders and a continue struggle to survive and define their purpose and identity. Russia is portrayed as a kleptocracy, Poland and Hungary as descending into illiberal  authoritarianism and Estonia and the Ukraine as being trumatised by Russian aggression and interference. 

Depopulation, corruption and xenophobia seem to proliferate throughout. The story of Eastern Europe following the collapse of the USSR is indeed a dispiriting one with the evaporation of so much hope and expectation. However with the absence of something like the Marshall Plan the consequences were perhaps inevitable. Not great reading if you take like the author an outward looking liberal approach but it will provide you if nothing else with a glimpse into lands not far away that  provide a warning what happens when truth is replaced by lies and distortion.

There's lots to enjoy, and even more to be worried about, in Rory Maclean's journey to Russia and back through Europe to the UK "to try to understand how it went wrong".  The Russia section, which is the bulk of the book, is the most gripping and astounding section, although its effect is slightly reduced by the fact it follows a string of books examining Russia's current position (the best of which is probably Pomerantsev's Nothing is True...).  After that it loses way a little but the parallels Maclean draws between the rise of the right in Poland and Hungary and Brexit are fascinating and well-made. Can't decide if the title is genius or a mistake though.