Please join Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov for a conversation with Grigor Atanesian about their new book, Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation, which tells the story of how the hopes of a generation of optimistic Russians in the 1990s was replaced by autocracy, fear, and betrayal.
Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov came of age as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and began their careers as journalists at the turn of the millennium, when Putin had just been elected president. Their group of journalist peers – highly-educated, intelligent young people with enormous potential – were set to enjoy the freedom of the new era. But the notion that Russia was on a path of democracy and destined to become closer to Europe and the West rapidly began to fade.
As Borogan and Soldatov embarked on a career investigating the Russian security services, they witnessed firsthand how the country was slipping back into authoritarianism, amid crackdowns on freedom of speech, the persecution of independent journalists, the insidious involvement of the FSB in the propaganda and disinformation machine, and the return of revanchist and anti-western narratives.
Their peers chose other paths, working at Kremlin media giants or in close proximity to the FSB and Putin, and their group of friends was slowly torn apart by the political shift. Some, like Borogan and Soldatov, were forced into exile, whereas others rose to powerful positions supporting the ever more aggressive state. Twenty five years later, the hopeful future they anticipated is unrecognisable. In their powerful and personal book, Borogan and Soldatov ask: how did this happen? Was it inevitable? And who is responsible?
Irina Borogan is an investigative journalist and cofounder and deputy editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services' activities. She has reported on terrorism in Yugoslavia and tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, among other topics, and has extensively chronicled the Kremlin's campaign to gain greater control of civil society. She is coauthor with Andrei Soldatov of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015), and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Emigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. Her reporting has also been featured in The New York Times, The Moscow Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, The Christian Science Monitor, Online Journalism Review, CNN, and the BBC. She lives in London.
Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist and cofounder and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services' activities. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Moscow Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, The Christian Science Monitor, Online Journalism Review, CNN, and the BBC. He is coauthor with Irina Borogan of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015), and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Emigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. He lives in London.
Grigor Atanesian is a BBC journalist and a former Esquire Russia editor. He received his MA from the University of Missouri School of Journalism via a Fulbright grant. He is the BAFTA-winning documentary producer for Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone by Adam Curtis (BBC Film), and the producer and reporter for The Zaks Affair: Anatomy of a Fake Collection (aired on BBC Four and BBC News channels). He has contributed to The Guardian, The Moscow Times, GQ, Forbes, Port and other publications.
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