Hidden Forces

In Episode 121, of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Yaffa, a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker about what life is like in Putin’s Russia. Yaffa's latest book on the subject is a fascinating inquiry into the Soviet and post-Soviet personality type that sustains the state’s power and Vladimir Putin’s place atop it.  Joshua Yaffa’s new book is titled, “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.” It’s a book about life in modern Russia that pulls both from the country’s history, as well as from a large body of sociological research into the Soviet and post-Soviet personality type whose “habits, inclinations, and internal moral calculations,” according to Joshua “elevated Vladimir Putin to his current position and which now perform the small, daily work that, in aggregate, keeps him there.” This conversation is one of the more nuanced you are bound to hear on the subject of Russia, Putin, and Russian propaganda in American media. Yaffa speaks critically, but honest