How does Putin’s propaganda work? With her book, Irina Rastorgueva won the Leipzig Book Prize. A conversation about manipulation techniques that have long since found their way to the West.
Irina Rastorgueva won the Leipzig Book Prize in the Sachbuch category for her book “Pop-up-Propaganda-Epicrise of Russian Self-poisoning” (Matthes & Seitz). She was born in 1983 in Juschno-Sachalinsk on the island of Sachalin deep in the Far East of Russia. There she worked as a lecturer in journalism from 2005 to 2016 at the state university, then went to Moscow for three years before emigrating to Berlin. “Pop-up propaganda” is such an impressive meticulous and dark balance that Putin’s propaganda has done with Russia and its citizens. A deep look at the methods of an almost all -encompassing totalitarian consciousness industry, about whose henchmen she notices in the book that you could write your own book about her: “Almost all of them were once journalists, some of them even gifted.” When talking in the morning after the award ceremony, the sober bravery and cheerful illusion is noticeable, with the Rastorgueva, which speaks fluently German.