ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, and the World. Radical Philosophy. Cracks in the Kremlin matrix - Peter Pomerantsev. Peter Pomerantsev enters the matrix of managed democracy that underpins postmodern dictatorship in Russia. A society of pure spectacle, with fake parties, fake opposition, fake scandals and fake action: this is the political technologists' project, in which (almost) everything becomes PR.
Sometime near the start of this century, at the height of the Russian oil boom, the blossoming of the Putin era, the maturing of "managed democracy" and the birth of postmodern dictatorship, I found myself in a long, grey room on the top floor of Ostankino, the Russian television centre that is the size of five football fields and the battering ram of Kremlin propaganda. I had recently arrived from London to make it as a policy consultant and later TV producer in the rapidly expanding Russian television market. At the end of the table sat Mikhail Leontiev, the country's most famous political TV presenter.
Leontiev is best known for the five minutes of hate he delivers after the news. Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. Русский Биографический Словарь. Encyclopedia of Earth.