Introduction -- Separate ways -- Not with a bang -- Zlost' -- Broken promises? -- NATO's final solution? -- The Great Patriot War; chosen glory and historical truth -- Versailles, Weimar, and Russophobia -- Shared past, divergent presents -- Memory wars -- Euromaiden and the president's fears of revolution -- Crimea and territorial memory -- Donbas-Kyiv and Moscow's problem child -- The Putin paradox and the hollow regime -- Holy war -- Countdown to conflict -- Resistance, denial, and disinformation -- A crisis of liberal democracy -- Conclusion

An original and informative look at Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics