Bettie's Books

bookshelves: winter-20142015, journalism, nonfiction, politics, gangsters, games-people-play, filthy-lucre, published-2014, slavic, sleazy, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, lifestyles-deathstyles, true-grime, under-500-ratings, tbr-busting-2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0505zw3

Description: In the early 2000s, Peter Pomerantsev (Kiev-born, raised in England; the son of Russian political exiles) came to Moscow to work in the fast-growing television and film industry. The job gave him first hand access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He was perfectly placed to witness the transformation of the New Russia on its journey from communist collapse to a new form of dictatorship.

In a series of character studies, the subjects of Pomerantsev's reality TV documentaries, we glimpse the ways in which the Russian people have responded to and acted upon the opportunities (as well as terrible injustices) of Putin's new world order. Including, Oliona, professionally trained 'gold digger', escaping a bleak upbringing in Siberia; Vitaly, gangster-turned-filmmaker who studied his favourite American mafia movies and then made his auto theft crimes the subject of a hit six part drama series; and, Mozhayev, an architectural and urban historian who fights in vain to save what remains of the buildings of the Moscow that existed before the Soviet experiment.

Russia's journey from communism to a new form of dictatorship.

Vitaly, a notorious gangster-turned-film director summons Peter to a private audience.

The nightmarish ordeal of a business woman falsley accused of drug trafficking.

Peter meets a 'guardian spirit' of Old Moscow, defender of its historic architecture.

Pondering the new dictatorship.

If you are strapped for time just listen to episode three to get a handle on Putin's way of taking over industries.

Written by Peter Pomerantsev
Read by Justin Salinger
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.


Surprise
Kamufliazh - camouflage
Demonstrativnye manevry - manoeuvres intended to deceive
Skrytie - concealment
Imitatsia - the use of decoys and military dummies
Dezinformatsia - disinformation, a knowing attempt to deceive

(Source)