'Forty-eight years ago, a young and apprehensive Tony Kevin set off on his first diplomatic posting to Moscow at the height of the Cold War. In the Russian winter of 2016 he returns alone, a private citizen aged 73. What will he find? How has Russia changed since those grim Soviet days?
'Tony Kevin had a successful and challenging diplomatic career, ending with ambassadorships to Poland (1991-94) and Cambodia (1994-97). He now applies his attention to Vladimir Putin's Russia, a government and nation routinely demonised and disdained in Western capitals. Why does President Putin arouse such a high level of Western antagonism? Is the West throwing away the lessons of recent history in recklessly drifting into a perilous and unnecessary new Cold War confrontation against Russia?
'Tony Kevin invites readers to see this great nation anew: to explore with him the complex roots of Russian national identity and values, drawing on its traumatic recent sevety-year Soviet Communist past and its momentous thousand-year history as a great Orthodox Christian nation that has both loved and feared 'the West,' and which the West has loved and feared back in equal measure.' (Publication summary)
