The Good Russian: In Search of a Nation's Soul by Jana Bakunina

When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Jana Bakunina felt furious, ashamed, and utterly helpless. A year later she returned to Yekaterinburg, witnessing a city seemingly untouched by war. In “The Good Russian”, she explores ordinary Russians’ complicity, her father’s support for the brutal regime, and the struggle to imagine a truly liberated future.

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the writer Jana Bakunina, who has lived in the UK for 20 years, felt furious, ashamed, but most of all helpless. A year later she travelled to her home city of Yekaterinburg to see how ordinary Russians viewed the conflict – and whether the soul of her nation had truly been crushed.

Jana finds a booming city seemingly untouched by war. Reconnecting with old friends, she discovers people either happy to go along with a regime that has brought them stability, or else staying out of politics. Most painful of all, her once liberal father has channelled his personal disappointments into becoming a firm fan of Putin.

In the grand humane tradition of Russian dissident writers, Jana Bakunina grapples with a universal problem: what happens when a country you love becomes infected by nationalism? What hope is there when voices of conscience are silenced by dictatorship? And can Russians in exile still imagine a liberated future?

"An important and necessary book... a work of honesty and humanity," – Mishal Husain

"This is a unique and necessary book. The Good Russian takes us inside wartime Russia, to a city that Jana Bakunina knows intimately. She brings us face to face with ordinary Russians, and also tells her own compelling personal story. Best of all, she writes very well." – Simon Kuper, FT journalist and author of the bestselling Chums

"A fine and brave book."–  Luke Harding, author of Invasion: Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival

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