Just finished reading Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia. Very good.
This was a good little bit of jargon/usage/language.
"My first boyfriend. Back home in Donbas. That was love. He was a local authority.’ Authority is a nice word for gangster."
This feels true:
"And the new Kremlin won’t make the same mistake the old Soviet Union did: it will never let TV become dull. The task is to synthesise Soviet control with Western entertainment. Twenty-first-century Ostankino mixes show business and propaganda, ratings with authoritarianism."
And this:
"Everyone here drove the latest models. They might have their toilets in wooden outhouses, and their flats might be yellowing, but the big, black cars were always shining with a TV-commercial sparkle. Stas took us to a meet at which locals showed off how they’d upgraded their automobiles. One guy had installed a jacuzzi in the back; another had a movie theatre. There was tenderness in how they showed off their prized possessions. These heavy men touched their cars so delicately. Stas took out a little toothbrush to clean the headlights on his Land Cruiser: he scrubbed it softly, patiently, as if he was washing a toddler."
And:
"The governor himself was large and bald and always sweating. ‘I went to Poland recently,’ he told Benedict the only time they met. ‘I saw them making ketchup in cement mixers. That’s the sort of innovation we need here."
More good jargon:
"Political technologists are the new Russian name for a very old profession: viziers, grey cardinals, Wizards of Oz."