Theories of imperial nationalism have been gaining ground in Russia since Vladimir Putin swept to power over two decades ago, bringing with him a coterie of former spies. Ever since, the rise of these ideas has been associated with the special services, serving to rationalise in theoretical terms a rebirth of autocracy and an effort to reconstitute Moscow's former empire, most recently in the tragic invasion of Ukraine. Discussing these ideas and their entanglement with the Russian special services will be Charles Clover, who wrote about Russia's new nationalism in his 2016 book Black Wind, White Snow, which has now been reprinted in a third edition, and Catherine Belton, author of the recent bestseller Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took On the West.
This is an in-person only event.
Anyone who read Black Wind White Snow when it was first published would sadly not have been surprised by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Taking a deep dive into the ideology behind Russia’s drive to create a Eurasian empire, Clover, who was Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, digs into the writings of Alexander Dugin, whose seminal work The Foundation of Geopolitics became one of the most influential texts for Russia's foreign policy elite. Clover’s prescient work unearths Dugin’s close ties with the Russian army's General Staff Academy and a cabal of hard-line KGB officers yearning to return to Russia’s imperial past.
Join us to mark the publication of a new edition of this outstanding book, which casts fresh light on the Kremlin’s path to war in Ukraine.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Catherine Belton reports on Russia for the Washington Post. She worked from 2007-2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and in 2016 as the newspaper's legal correspondent. She has previously reported on Russia for Moscow Times and Business Week and served as an investigative correspondent for Reuters. Her first book, Putin’s People, published by William Collins in 2020, was a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller, and a Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize.
Charles Clover is a Nikkei Asia Cover Story Editor. He was formerly a Beijing correspondent for Financial Times and the FT's Moscow bureau chief. He has been with the FT since 1997, working in a variety of roles for the newspaper, based in Kyiv, Baghdad and Kabul as well as in London. In 2011 he won the British Press Awards Foreign Reporter of the Year award.