Anyway, congratulations on what is a terrific book. Im so glad youve returned this. We have written so many books and articles about the dissidents and opposition and that is like maybe 10 of the population we dont hear a lot of people in between make do and get by. The idea came to me slowly as i found i wasnt exactly able to capture what i was seeing and feeling and maybe because i wasnt understanding the picture myself when i arrived with that dichotomy that you mentioned looking for the oppressors. With stalin or neo and that makes for good journalism. With time i realized i wasnt doing justice to the country and there was a lot of left out of the story. But i didnt totally have the framework if it wasnt this battle between the position debate co opposition. We can talk about this a bit and it takes up most of the prologue of the book was the way of making sense of what was going on and helping me understand the way that most people the dynamics that guide people are ultimately so familiar and universe with those that are trying to get by but have some quite noble ambition for their lives and what they want to accomplish and in whatever reality they happen to be in. They cant change that reality they can try through compromise and the idea to get accomplished what they can and in so doing often times they change through the process of the compromises and the aggregate of Society Changes over time. We were all drawn to the story. It is a in many countries there is saddam hussein, all the other people against him because they were against gadhafi and then somebody like this happens and we dont know where to put her. Could this give you any insight into why things like that happen . No, but it made me realize the interesting theory was that zone that became a psychological problem to understand how it was navigated and i purposely chose people i couldnt come to a final conclusion about with a good or bad. They were people that defined my attempt. I would welcome other people in that regard. That is what interested me and it ended up in the book even after spending how many hours with them over hours and months and years i still couldnt put them in the box are they doing something noble or are they to be commended were criticized. It was important with the experience of the characters itself. It didnt allow me to reach a kind of conclusive position. Before we get deeper into this they want to outline food he or she is . I will read a little bit from the prologue. At the start of 2012, i moved back to work as a journalist covering russia for the audience and with time for the new yorker in the western imagination they were held captive in his own power as the story goes with a population of 145 Million People driving them in the cage with propaganda and repression. Yet over the course of several years as i reported on the major historical turmoil the street protests, extravagant preparations for the 2014 olympics, the annexation, the standoff in the west over the world in ukraine, fallout from the 2016 president ial election and combined sanctions and economic crisis i met those that showed no sign of being held against their will. These were not necessarily enthusiastic supporters or even people who voted for him in fact they treated it as a given neither good nor bad, but simply they are again element in the atmosphere and went about constructing their lives around it. Governments of course exist in america and europe as do all constraints people myself included must constantly navigate. The pressure is universal and ever present the feature in the world no matter where you find yourself. But the presence of the state and the inevitability of the demand struck me. One could not live in different to the state an infected this to your advantage to guess and delivedeliver that would also bn cleveinclever to extract a bener yourself. This is a predicament of the sociologists that came up with the concept in the essay in 2000 for whom the state head of the hardship and opportunity. I came to understand that in russia they speak in dialogue and wrote that for many the state isnt simply a technical apparatus of the largescale administration but a symbolic institution with a basic understanding of human nature. The state takes on this importance though it is a force was present power exceeds that. In my travels around the country, i met proud and brilliant men and women from activists, economists, Business Owners who believed the best if not the only way to realize the vision within concorde with the state. It was hard to believe they were wrong and i wasnt confident i they would choose any differently. A place where smart professionals up good ideas half of which were implemented into the other half of which was political implications were discarded. For a lawyer with the most fashionable job was working on the statefunded unification projects expanding the zones, renovating city card parks, rethinking the transport. Such initiatives made the city more present and a domain with similar efforts expended to others around the country. Even in the absence of the larger democratic reforms if anything the politics were in the opposite direction the cities became desirable and enjoyable places to live. Is it plausible to the state to achieve change on a local level or does this only helped to perpetuate the inefficient system. The question wa was never settld but it surfaced time and again. The joke is on them were you although it is an unhelpful metaphor to understand and i found myself returning to one thing learned in the camps. Maybe there are no answers to these questions between the two fires the condition of being stuck in the middle of the force is bigger than your self making it out the other side is about the best outcome available. The more i thought and wrote about the way people actually live and work in putins russia, the more i realized it was largely impossible to separate them into two camps of the oppressed and the oppressor. There were obvious victims and the unyielding positions brought great frustration and hardship just as they were the ambiguous to be too unambiguous to use te state of a ready to wind their pockets or who got off on an acting banner of cruelty but most of the people i encountered were neither. They were nimble and resource for you shall be set out the virtuous and understandable motive. Motive. What fascinated me was the compromises required in bringing those to life and have overtime how they can change a person and the rationale that motivated the action in the first place. I see some people kind of shaking their head about the hee compromises described and i just want to start by saying, or ask about what you said earlier where it isnt a phenomenon in fact we have seen this under the Trump Administration that people who were very much against it and if i can help the country. How do you see did you come down on any side i want to go into this concept a little more. What is the line. I applaud them and they have my admiration. I dont think they are the necessarily most effective for journalistic. As far as the red lines, in the book i purposely didnt draw them. Thats different than i might say about my own life with my own political or social context. I think there are a lot of interesting parallels and the reason people go further in the first place and what they think they can achieve and where they actually write, does the compromise actually yield what they were searching for that goes awry into their jaded from the process they are not the same person from when they went in. The difference i see is the singular role the state plays in russia that doesnt exist here in russia that isnt the case and it makes the case more inevitable than it is here. Here i can understand it but it isnt as if there wasnt any other choice realizing their motives or professional ambitions. The one fact that struck me wasnt until i was pointed out to me i learned when i was reporting the chapter of a celebrated experimental computer director who for a time had a shortlived interest in supporting the art forms and benefited from the states and used the money to put on the remarkable productions interestingly many of which were implicitly or explicitly critical to the states paying for them. It was found objectionable and the person said you dont have the choice of making a movie with state funding or without state funding. That isnt the offer on the tabltable is do you want to maka movie or not if you want to make a movie there is really only one way to do that and when you put the question that way it becomes harder for me to sit and judge. Shes a film director born in a certain time and place and only has one shot as a prime. Why shouldnt he make the kind of films he wants to make. This is more of a comment than a question. To come back from russia to the states where russian dissidents are lauded as heroes and martyrs because they stand up to the state because they refused to make the compromises you made in the book and yet as soon as things get difficult here, you see so many people running to make compromises that are so much lower. It isnt dubai go to jail, do i not get killed, did they make a movie or not, can i pay my mortgage and have a nice lifestyle or not pay into the slightly less lifestyle into the air more than willing to make that compromise is to turn that into the question, you live in both worlds. Do you understand why we fetishize and we want to know what hes thinking and what he wants and what he says and what it means and i hope more people are interested because you made it so interesting that you have been in tight . Going back to the Greek Literature it is more digestible and understandable so he makes it so easy such a perfect comic book super villain but its hard to resist the urge to make every story about because they are so good and they are fun to write he just makes it too easy. Im beginning to suspect by design is very happy with that arrangement in his kind of positioning of the geopolitics. But there im not sure. So much revolves around the state that he embodies and there isnt an obvious ideology like there was a. It means for all intensive purposes but someone that places the state in a kind of elevated position. They are feeble and collapsed from within and that is the great tragedy. He was making shows about the german arthouse films wearing a motorcycle jacket with long hair grew into being the powerful propagandist of the era before him that is a fascinating transformation and when he takes no small amount of pride. There is a degree of continuity or compromise in his case because despite his taste choosing to put the offbeat Television Series on prime time he never stopped believing in the central or premier authority of the state and thats what makes him interesting to me. He said he is an intellectual but he is no liberal and i have to sit with that for a minute because those are often interchangeable or collapsible into one entity. Im sure a lot of you read the excerpt a couple of weeks ago i thought he was an interesting choice because, and this is a bit of a criticism i didnt see that compromise he was making. Having an aesthetic isnt really an ideologin ideology and he see the kind of karl rove of the administration who loved to talk and obama that came from that generation from the early 60s that were so absolutely cynical. You Pay Lip Service but you get what you get so what compromise were they making . As you say it isnt necessarily for political or moral, it isnt a conflict with himself. It is a stylistic especially after the annexation of crania and all that followed as the politics have curdled into something aggressive and inward looking and suspicious in the values that ernst wants and still holds dear has been forced to adopt certain aesthetics i know he must find distasteful. You cant actually be a loyal foot soldier in the propaganda war and maintain these high intellectual standards. Hes kept it a little bit less covered in mud and the others and that is interesting to see but nonetheless there is something to say about his stewardship in the channel that makes it a little bit less than the programming on some of the other channels but there is still a fullfledged participant in the information war and he knows he had no choice. When duty calls this with the times required but i suspect that deep down he would rather be spending his nights picking which in the arthouse film does he want to buy the rights to rather than having to defend the egregiously fake segments that end up on his deat his network e story of the crucified by in Eastern Ukraine that turned out to be completely invented. Since we are on this, to more questions. Two more questions. One, when you wrote about the incredible display you didnt mention one of the rings didnt open that became a kind of trope for everything thattruthfor evh the government. How did you explain that the choice . Ththat is the function of no great editorial. It is the decision on my part and i wouldnt include the malfunction of the ring during the opening ceremonies which otherwise including opposition figures but its seen as the one snafu she made fun of it and in the closing ceremony he had onen for the second also not open so that struck me as an interesting case for the degree of power and selfdeprecation and irony isnt what you normally see with people that occupy those positions of power. That is a great of detail and anecdote and you mentioned this a lot in the book but its also part of like how the state maintained its image and legitimacy. It has people like you. We have some press and we are nice to foreigners. A lot of our friends i think would say dont legitimize them or go near. What was the choice like for y you. I would welcome or accept criticism of the defensibility of the choice, but i just wanted to see what the factory floor looked like. That actually you turn this official policy. But i was there to be the stand and avatar for america and america needed to be used as the bogeyman. And i treated it like that exercise and something comical and so in that sense it served its purpose. What is interesting is i went to go see one of the house of the show, a guy who was a former soviet paratrooper, a nononsense tough guy who was the most crass and overthetop and once tried to punch another american and likes to throw elbows so i went to see him one night to have a conversation when there were no cameras and was really thoughtful and we no longer agreed on substance about anything. There were no antics. He did not interrupt me and said talk to me for three hours and at the end of it. I told him that i am surprised by the tenor of this conversation is nice. Normally im on the show you are shouting at me and calling me names and interrupting me. So it is Something Like people dont go up and ask them why they are not punching them in the face when there a boxer but when im out Walking Around the street i do another. So i dont know how that is any different so its a job and have character. And that showman said one showmanship or cynicism. While we have you, how did you decide which characters would be in the book . Who was left on the cutting room floor . People love to hear about the process and the decisions that were made. I did think of it like a casting call and how that word populate the books. And i thought about it in a few different lenses in a few different criteria in mind and wanted a representative to be a cross sample of the professions and lives with all those different aspects of russia that were important and interesting i knew i wanted someone from media it can be any better so that was a pretty easy thought to check and a priest and someone to represent the Greek Orthodox church that took the longest amount of time and thats a world that i know just by the nature of my job and living in moscow. Nobody in media or state media. And with that Orthodox Church to rely on the advice of russian journalist friends. And those who knew who was who who. So that initial criteria for anybody and reflect on the question of compromise. And from the very beginning pretty severely and down the line and no longer what is someone from crimea or chechnya who could deflect on historical memories and then to focus not on that one individual but institution so that is the only museum to political oppression and all of russia. It is the only museum or memorial complex from the former prison camp and former auschwitz stockouts style one dock out style but i wanted to capture that wide range it also geographically it is inevitable because it is such a centralized place so a lot of what is happening ends up happening in moscow but i want to resist that temptation from a characters live and work in moscow and the last important criteria at the beginning as i want to find people that they were confounding to me. And i dont know where i landed on the compromise. I wanted to emerge and still not able at that place. There is no character in the book who i would say all the way good or all the way bad or more sympathetic to the humanitarian aid worker that my heart goes out to. She dried tragically in a plane crash in 2015 before he began actively reporting for the book so he is a big boy he knows what he is doing maybe he knows better. So i dont feel that about him and he could answer for people want to hold him to account like the fake news that was on channel one so i do feel he has engaged in compromising experience player so there is a wide range of attitude to the characters but i can never say this persons in a good category or bad category. Anything interesting on the cutting room floor . Not really. I used to think god i had the wherewithal i didnt get months in two reporting the priest character took a while to come together there were for some false starts but there is no such thing as wasted reporting even though i spent time with other priest that did not make it into the book it was just a great education and how they think about the patriarchy so there were some priest who did not make it into the book but im sure the experiences and the stories they shared did reflect the ability to act as the omniscient mate one narrato narrator. The last question before the audience. You and your book very presciently and appropriately on younger people and the other group the grownups create the problems that they will solve the gun issue with Climate Change and College Students in russia will get rid of putin for us. What is your take away what would you tell americans is that a great hope or just like their parents . I dont know despite spending time with them. And then to give a less weasel answer for that. But definitely there is something going on that is different with this generation. That seems very clear to me after spending time with them and with that formative experience. And then the decline of the soviet union and that was dominated why we double think of soviet society that produced a generation or two of cynics im not sure russia can over one dash and then to be replaced when the formative experiences come after and there is no alchemy involved. And it wasnt steeped in the time to have those experiences and emerged with less cynicism. To see the way that they engage of social activities that require high degree activities of trust. And not necessarily activism but to trust one another to do the right thing. And i dont think the parents see the world that way. They dont navigate presuming this person will do me right. As you know from your experience 50 or 60 plus word navigate exactly the opposite expectation and an aggregate that does change society with 20 or 40 Million People. And those in a different culture but the question is how strong will the inertia be . Initially those young people and then to realize the dreams. And then to acquire compromises that looks of one similar and how they emerge from bad experience to agree to the same compromises and will they be changed by those compromises when they emerge at the end of that resembling their parents more than they do now. And then we have to run that to get an outcome. You will have to be a tough moderator so make your question very short make it a question and not a statement otherwise i will cut you off. This is the question something you may have on the cutting room floor you wrote about it in 2013 and to be impressed by the competitors. Blast from the past. Thank you for mentioning the story i kept up for a little bit and to became the rights activist and was helping other entrepreneurs in those situations that face criminal repression or by their competitors that are in cahoots. And like i said. He was giving advice and counsel to entrepreneurs and i have no real good answers why its already that many pages long at a certain point i couldnt get everybody. And i always thought they would respond with great character. And certainly the act of running a business in russia requires no small amount of compromise still it is inescapable when the veterinary police show up. I do ride that and cry one crimea who is the zookeeper and then also running his business. My name is rick davis. How does everything you write about these people making compromises, how does that affect dealing with the outside world . Because like anyplace russia especially or foreign politics are overlapped and it is affected by the others is somebody like ernst has russia adopted a much more aggressive special relation to the west and that was absolutely swept up in that. In fact a change the whole tenor and the nature of the compromise. Frankly her death on board of Russian Military aircraft to syria was directly linked both to her cooperation and the willingness to participate in humanitarian missions but also the russian invention in syria that was meant to be good pr led by the Russian Defense ministry to travel to syria to deliver medicines to hospitals but that is the direct out, foreign policy. So the Museum Dedicated to the gulags was subject to what you would call a hostile takeover from the states and found it in the nineties by a local diy and taken out from under them ten years later. And at the peak of the anti western hysteria where among other things of the since the museum had committed it is too soft on ukrainian prisoners held at the museum or held at the prison in the postwar years and linking to nationalism with the fascism is now used as an explanation why russia had to intervene or stand up for the citizens to be embroiled in conflict with the ugly ukrainian fascism to have these exhibits that spoke to those people even with you were not expected the attitude to the outside world affected the compromise. So with this book what is the motivation to be fully open with you knowing that who might read the book is there any underlying that plays out . And with that big brother watching these people does that change the narrative . We cannot see why they chose to speak with me and be open with me that does say what we are telling me but ultimately it is to the final degree. To someone like ernst he really felt a need for a sense of relief to have this earnest sympathetic american journalist sit and listen to him to take his career seriously and give him that credibility. Maybe who collaborated with the state that we are there is no allusion about that. But i will grant him the status of the cultural and artistic and then to see him in that light and then to give to the compromises and then more than just propaganda without brains. That was important there is something satisfying and to be read back to him by american journalist. And his particular case was going on for allied of characters to be taken seriously and then to become a Court Human Rights activist. And for the regime is the colleagues in the Russian Community turn their backs on her and to criticize understandably and was left without a lot of former colleagues and friends. I was there to listen and a lot of the characters found. Let me just take it back quickly to that question. It is interesting people were quite aware of what they were doing that people in the system at a certain point who drink the koolaid and to be even aware of the fact and from the seller media did you think any of that why you saw it cost a certain line and then it disappeared so far beyond the rearview mere that they lost all that perspective . Yes those that didnt choose for that reason because it is less interesting and not the compromise i wanted to pursue but they come in a supporting characters there is another Russian Television personality as a valid liberal with that journalistic standard and is now the most egregious Television Host on russian state media. But more is possible and clownish and foul. And he is exactly that kind of person. He is so inhabited with his new role he doesnt reflect back to any capacity or interest going from point a to point b but to bear his soul to a journalist to wants him to explain that journey but there were moments we were talking past each other absolutely and one was the shootdown to the investigations by the dutch government that proved pretty conclusively it was shot down by a russian aircraft system that was provided to russian back separatist at the time. And to put forward all sorts of absurd and contradictory theories that what happened. That only to be shut down by the russian missile. And all sorts of contradictory theories that dont even matchup and thats to produce a lot of noise and not make people believe in one thing or another. So it was clear we werent actually talking about being objective factual in the universe it felt like we were having a conversation about aesthetics so we were two Intelligent Minds and films or whatever and read that historical fact one thing did happen by definition it was hard to have that. It was hard to have that conversation with him and in moments like that , whatever, to have those shared cultural tastes there is something that keeps us from having a true and common conversation. Thank you very much. Your comments about russian youth to have something along the lines of what happens in exchange between American Youth and russia. But another hypothetical what would happen hypothetically if you could put together a bunch of russian journalists or american journalists so they could spend a week in total secrecy. That happened in moscow. So some of my closest friends. So who comes away changed . Who has changed more . Im not sure either said that emerges particularly changed i certainly emerged with a respect with that acknowledgment with that attitude of russian journalism as a profession under siege that had a patronizing effect not due to the real work that is done every day there are journalist being attacked or murdered but there are four more on far more doing impactful work and by painting them with a broad brush and those that are perpetually dodging and not to deny that reality but. So the other thing that i would add to what josh said a lot of journalist go there and to do journalism and then to put that on every single day and then you think how are they get that . And that americans the overly fetish People Like Us so are you scared to go to russia or be killed or beaten up . We are quite privileged to be more or less and touchable and the russian friends and colleagues that are more likely to be driven out by the economics which we dont care about here and and then to be shut down because advertisers are pressured not to advertise so therefore people cannot be paid we dont give them martyr status. So thats a terrible note to end on. Do you want to say anything else . No. I certainly have learned a lot and it couldnt have happened without those russian journalists that point the way to the sources and ideas so i would be happy to end on a note with them. Thank you. [applause]