“TV is the only force that can unify and rule and bind this country,” Pomerantsev writes. “It’s the central mechanism of a new type of authoritarianism far subtler than 20th-century strains.” This provides the best framework with which to understand Putin’s publicity stunts. “All the shirtless photos hunting tigers and harpooning whales are love letters to the endless queues of fatherless girls,” Pomerantsev writes, telling the story of Oliona, a young beauty seeking an oligarch to care for her. Putin’s tough-guy talk also appeals to Vitaly, a small-time gangster. When Putin first came to power in 1999, anointed by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, the question on everyone’s lips was: “Who is he?” Pomerantsev’s answer: whatever Russians need him to be. As one personality on state-run television puts it, “We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense something is happening. . . . Politics has got to feel like . . . like a movie!”

Part reportage and part memoir, “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” follows the author as he navigates the reality show that is Russia. At first, he is drawn in by Moscow’s chaos, with its fresh and gaudy wealth, wild parties and intense personalities. He embraces the world of Moscow’s extremes, working for a network called TNT, producing shows with titles like “How to Marry a Millionaire.” Yet he soon sees the dark side of the madness — the violence, the emptiness and, ultimately, the lack of control average Russians have over their own fate. Russians’ ability to adapt to their environment no longer seems admirable. “It was only years later,” he writes, “that I came to see these endless mutations not as freedom but as forms of delirium.”

Pomerantsev’s pitches for shows arise from the reality that he, as a knowing outsider, sees. In response, he is met with coos from the higher-ups at the network and suggestions that he concentrate on positive stories. Russian television isn’t meant to mirror reality, it’s meant to shape it. And no one at TNT — no one in the country’s leadership — needs to explore anything controversial.

Putin was keenly aware of how his critics once used the pluralistic, and politicized, television media of an earlier era to attack him; the first sign of his autocratic tendencies was his crude move to bring major television channels under state control. Some wondered if this was an aberration, but Putin soon used the same methods to steer everything from the oil industry to unruly oligarchs into the Kremlin’s fold.

Putin has now fully established control over the media. A vast majority of Russians still get most of their information from television, and the three major channels are either owned directly by the Kremlin or by state-owned companies. Each week, a Kremlin official directs their coverage. Major newspapers have been cowed. Russia’s only independent television channel — TV Rain — is facing enormous pressure to shut down.