
Insider Michael Idov's "Dressed Up for a Riot" reveals Putin's Moscow through his GQ Russia editorship - where hipster culture meets political corruption. Creator of "The Americans" Joe Weisberg called it "damning portrayal of a whole system" through glamorous Moscow high life.
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Picture announcing to your immigrant parents that you're moving back to the country they fled-the one they escaped with nothing but relief and a framed portrait of Lenin they kept in the fridge "so he could watch American plenty and weep." That's exactly what happened in 2011 when the call came to return to Moscow as editor-in-chief of Russian GQ. The timing seemed perfect: Moscow was alive with middle-class protests against Putin, organized by media professionals who could have been friends. Russia offered what felt like a space-time shortcut to success-a place desperately trying to become New York, making it a playground for actual New Yorkers. But there was something else, something harder to admit: the chance to finally resolve an identity that had never quite settled, to understand what being Russian actually meant when you'd spent your whole life running from it.
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