Description

‘MikhaIl Fishman, a veteran journalist of the Putin era, tells the Nemtsov story with extraordinary reportorial detail and a profound sense of what could have been’ David Remnick, author of Lenin’s Tomb

When did Russia lose its chance of freedom?

1990: As a new openness sweeps Russia, a talented young physicist, Boris Nemtsov, begins his career in politics. Charismatic, confident, liberal and vehemently opposed to corruption, he swiftly rises to prominence. For the first time, another future seems possible.

2015: Putin holds the country in the grip of tyranny once more. Nemtsov, now his fiercest and most unrelenting opponent, is assassinated on a Moscow bridge.

This is the story of how a nation’s dreams of democracy died.

Drawing on buried archives and off-the-record interviews, exiled journalist Mikhail Fishman gives a gripping insider account of the tragedy of modern Russia, told through many lives of Boris Nemtsov – activist, playboy, leader-in-waiting, dissident and, finally, victim. From the economic reforms under Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy, through two wars in Chechnya and the invasion of Ukraine, this is the story of a man fired by the belief that Russia could, still, have another future.

Publisher Review

“Mikhail Fishman, a veteran journalist of the Putin era, tells the Nemtsov story with extraordinary reportorial detail and a profound sense of what could have been.”
-David Remnick, author of Lenin’s Tomb

“An engrossing account of Russia’s fleeting brush with democracy and its slide back into authoritarian rule, told through the life of a man once expected to succeed Yeltsin. Fishman brilliantly evokes the charged atmosphere of those years, a time when anything seemed possible-until it wasn’t.”
-Daniel Treisman, co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century