I've been reading Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time (about the early post-Soviet era) and the despair that rises off the page may actually be thicker than in her book about Chernobyl.

But, you know, you can imagine Gennady sitting in front of the TV, getting drunk off his ass as he watches the attempted October Coup in 1993, and explaining slushily to Daniel that Russia is incapable of democracy because Stalin killed anyone who was capable of independent thought, "and those of us who are left aren't worth a shit, it's been bred out of us."