Overview

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker presents a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russia's resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putin's regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again. Walker not only explains Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in WWII to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been. This book explores why Russia, unlike Germany, has failed to come to terms with the darkest pages of its past: Stalin's purges, the Gulag, and the war deportations. The narrative roams from the corridors of the Kremlin to the wilds of the Gulags and the trenches of East Ukraine. It puts the annexation of Crimea and the newly assertive Russia in the context of the delayed fallout of the Soviet collapse. The Long Hangover looks to a lost generation: the millions of Russians who lost their country and the subsequent attempts to restore to them a sense of purpose.

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9780190659240

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Reviews

Intelligent and ambitious, Walker's book succeeds in providing insight into the recent history of a nation at the center of world attention. * Publisher's Weekly * This book has a very Russian feel to it. As with the best works of Russian literature, stories of ordinary people fold into the bigger picture. The characters cry, laugh, drink, fight, mourn, and celebrate all at once. Fear is mixed with hope, sorrow with pride, and things rarely end well. This is a deep, emotionally charged, and enthralling book that leaves a sad and bitter aftertaste. * Elena Racheva, Novaya Gazeta * In this skillful and vivid book, Shaun Walker allows us to understand the region's current affairs through ordinary and extraordinary people's experience of an un-dealt with past. * Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible * The heroes of our age of postmodern myth are the investigative reporters. Shaun Walker has not only done the hard and necessary work of reporting from Russia and Ukraine, he has also reflected, with remarkable historical and literary sensibility, on what it means when a great power gives up on its own future and decides instead to market its past. * Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University, and author of On Tyranny and Bloodlands * The Long Hangover is thoughtful, brave, and full of insight. Anyone who wants to understand Russia now needs to read it. * John Simpson, BBC News * A brilliant book * Frost Magazine * The Long Hangover thankfully does not fixate on the character of Putin. Instead, it focuses on the social conditions that he taps into (and manipulates). The book is girded by Walker's vivid reporting from every corner of the country - far more valuable than armchair analyzing. It also refrains from offering any easy or sweeping answers. * William Armstrong, Hurriyet Daily News * a superb book * Angus Roxburgh, CABLE Magazine * It is ... [the] passages - so charged with personality whilst remaining politically astute that make Walkers prose so compelling to read. He takes the singular melody we trumpet about Russia in the West and adds harmony, dynamics, colour and context. Read this book and you will have a more nuanced understanding of the dissonant symphonies emanating from the east. * Matthew Janney, Culture Trip * It is hard to find fault in such a spectacular book, which deftly weaves personal narratives with grand geopolitical tensions to produce a compelling read ... a real tour de force of book-length reporting. * Kieran Pender, Australian Book Review * [Walker] is more successful than most of his western journalistic competitors in exploring the often contradictory attitudes that Russians hold towards their president and the hybrid system he is building on the basis of Russian nationalism, Soviet nostalgia and a striving for international respect. * Jonathan Steele, The Guardian * [Walker] does an excellent job and ... keeps his narrative relatively short in a gripping and clear-sighted way. * Eamon Delaney, Irish Independent * The Long Hangover is considered and careful and humane, and should be compulsory reading for any politician considering engagement with either Moscow or Ukraine. Its not only the best book I've read on Putin's Russia, but also has great resonance for the age of Donald Trump and Brexit: no one likes being told they're a loser, everyone needs something to believe in. * Oliver Bullough, The Observer *

Intelligent and ambitious, Walker's book succeeds in providing insight into the recent history of a nation at the center of world attention. * Publisher's Weekly * This book has a very Russian feel to it. As with the best works of Russian literature, stories of ordinary people fold into the bigger picture. The characters cry, laugh, drink, fight, mourn, and celebrate all at once. Fear is mixed with hope, sorrow with pride, and things rarely end well. This is a deep, emotionally charged, and enthralling book that leaves a sad and bitter aftertaste. * Elena Racheva, Novaya Gazeta * In this skillful and vivid book, Shaun Walker allows us to understand the region's current affairs through ordinary and extraordinary people's experience of an un-dealt with past. * Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible * The heroes of our age of postmodern myth are the investigative reporters. Shaun Walker has not only done the hard and necessary work of reporting from Russia and Ukraine, he has also reflected, with remarkable historical and literary sensibility, on what it means when a great power gives up on its own future and decides instead to market its past. * Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University, and author of On Tyranny and Bloodlands * The Long Hangover is thoughtful, brave, and full of insight. Anyone who wants to understand Russia now needs to read it. * John Simpson, BBC News *

Intelligent and ambitious, Walker's book succeeds in providing insight into the recent history of a nation at the center of world attention. * Publisher's Weekly *

Author Information

Shaun Walker is the Moscow correspondent for The Guardian. He studied Russian and Soviet history at Oxford University, and has worked as a journalist in Moscow for more than a decade. Previously, he was Moscow Correspondent for the Independent.

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