When Joe Luc Barnes arrived in Moscow in 2014 as an English ‘governor’ to a six-year-old oligarch’s son, he expected Tolstoy-style dachas and polite tea. Instead, he found flashing blue lights, Champagne Sundays and an 85% approval rating for Vladimir Putin.

Eight years, 60,000 miles and one full-scale invasion later, Barnes set out to discover how every former Soviet republic – from war-scarred Ukraine to tech-hungry Estonia, oil-rich Kazakhstan to the torch-lit streets of Armenia – has fared since the red flag fell in 1991. How have the fifteen countries navigated their first thirty-five years of independence?

Travelling by rattling platzkart train, hitch-hiking and riding in the exclusively white cars mandated by the dentist dictator in Turkmenistan, he gathers a chorus of voices: taxi-drivers nursing small-town resentments, ex-gulag guards, TikTok-fuelled activists, queers on the run from police raids and billion-dollar oligarchs who still swear by Stalin. Barnes is in Moscow when Putin invades Ukraine and ends his journey in war-torn Kiev. The result is a deeply human, darkly comic portrait of a region the West still misunderstands – and a warning of what happens when empires break but the habits of empire refuse to die.

By turns hilarious, angry and heart-stopping, this is an indispensable political travelogue. If you loved The Silk Roads, Nothing to Envy or The Places in Between, and have a soft spot for Bill Bryson, clear space on your shelf: this is the book for you.

Author Biography

Joe Luc Barnes spent six years living in former Soviet countries from 2014, has a Master’s in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford and now reports from the region as a journalist in English, Russian and Spanish language media. He has contributed to numerous English language media, including The Financial Times; Nikkei; The Diplomat; and The Times of Central Asia. This includes reporting over the past year from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. He has visited all fifteen former USSR republics since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

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