Georgy Birger was digital production manager at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and former deputy editor in chief of the Russian pop culture magazine Afisha.
The acclaimed BBC series TraumaZone taps into the unsavory world of the Russian economic reforms of the 1990s that proved fatal to democracy, and challenges the popular myth about the Russian 1990s as a blessed era of liberation.
It’s ironic that a show about narratives, and the way they can turn sour, caused Russia’s own narrative machine to show its fragility.
The Kremlin is going after Russian rappers, but the government can't control a culture it doesn't understand.
