Sergei Medvedev 
A War Made in Russia 

In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia’s war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin’s obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin’s regime and of Russia’s entire imperial history. Building on his prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Medvedev argues that it was not only Putin that started this war, but Russia itself, which, by and large, has imagined and embraced it with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.

Table of Content

Introduction. Method in this Madness

Part I. The Anatomy of Violence

The State Came After the Body

Back to 1937

The Final Diagnosis

People as ‘The New Oil’

The Zoos of Terror

The Generator of Entropy

Part II. The Memory Crusad

Kolyma by the Kremlin

Memorial to Russian Resentment

Thus Spake Zhirinovsky

The Offering Made to the Ninth of May

A Long Farewell to Empire


Part III. The War Nation

The Zombie Apocalypse

Revenge of the Underground Man

The Z Virus

Russia Inside Out

Mobilization as Russian Fate

The Age of the Sledgehammer

War as a National Idea

The Unfinished Work of 1945


Notes

Index

About the author

Sergei Medvedev is a Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki and a Professor at the Charles University in Prague.