Power doesn’t just seize territory. It seizes the story. I’m using a selection of 6 excellent new books to follow the narrative battlegrounds where modern Russia tries to control what people see as true, normal, and inevitable, and where society still finds ways to push back even when formal protest is risky, whether in framing Harry Potter, or surviving in the occupied Donbas.
The books in question are:
- Alexis Lerner, Post-Soviet Graffiti. Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) - see also her Eurasian Knot podcast interview here.
- Michael Gorham, Networking Putinism. The rhetoric of power in the digital age (Cornell University Press, 2026)
- Eliot Borenstein,The Politics of Fantasy. Magic, Children’s Literature and Fandom in Putin's Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025).
- Greta Lynn Uehling, Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine (Cornell University Press, 2023)
- David Lewis, Occupation. Russian Rule in Southeastern Ukraine (Hurst, 2025)
- Martin Laryš, Rebel Militias in Eastern Ukraine, from leaderless groups to proxy armies (Routledge, 2025).
Details of the Times event on 7 May I mentioned are here.
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