"Volga Blues" offers readers a surprisingly poignant trek along the Volga River interspersed with interviews with locals and various forays into Russian/Soviet history to add context to the stream of consciousness discussions and, at times, meandering answers the author receives as he tries to navigate conversations about the past, present, and future with the population of a state in the midst of war with its neighbor(s). The historical excursions are mostly well done but they are brief and gloss over a fair amount of nuance, nonetheless they serve a purpose. The interviews hold the greatest value. Russia today is a country mostly cutoff for the west when it comes to reporting. Most of what the western audience hears and sees comes through a specific lens that is influenced by propaganda and the needs of specific actors and special interest groups (the same, to an even larger extent, applies to Russians, of course). Hearing what Russians are thinking, what they believe, and how they evaluate their present conditions/situation is the most valuable takeaway from this volume and helps answer why and how Russia's war in Ukraine has continued for as long as it has.
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