About the book: 2017 / Charles Clover worked for many years as the Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times. In his book, he traces the roots of a new nationalism based on the ideas of Eurasianism. The Eurasian theory was first formulated in the works of white emigrants in the 1920s, then it was developed by Lev Gumilev, and then, having passed through the experience of the “mystical underground,” the Eurasian version of imperial nationalism (“the Russian continent”) found a new embodiment in the geopolitics of Alexander Dugin. Charles Clover examines the causes and consequences of the rapid rise of a new nationalism that looked to an idealized past rather than a real future. Clover's restrained and reasonable position allows him to listen and reliably convey the point of view of his interlocutors: as an honest journalist, he avoids judgment and imposing his own judgment, the “story” is traced through a comparison of facts and statements. In that illusory semi-reality in which Russian politics resides, where fake is equated with the truth, events occur every now and then that sometimes seem like the end of the world to all of us. But if this is still not the end, then Clover’s book can become an indispensable guide on the way back from Through the Looking Glass.