No illusions

"What will the next generation of Russian leaders be like? How will they regard the United States, democracy, free speech, and immigration? What do they think of their current leaders? And what sorts of tactics will they bring to international negotiating tables, political and otherwise? Splinters in the Ice provides an engaging, intimate, and unprecedented window onto the mindsets of the next generation of leaders in Russian politics, business, and economics. In it, Ellen Mickiewicz, one of the world's foremost experts on Russian media, politics and culture, draws on interviews with students in Russia's three most elite universities, the training grounds for all of the nation's leadership. Allowing these students to speak in their own words, she shares their thoughts on international relations, the domestic and international media, democratic movements, and their government. She also shows how their total immersion in the world of the internet - an immersion that sets them apart from the current generation of Russian leadership and much of the rest of the country - frames the way that they think and affects their trust in their leaders, the media, and their colleagues. Mickiewicz also looks at the nation's recent protests and nascent political movements to show how they came about and to consider what promise, if any, they might hold for a more democratic Russia. "--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.