In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service.
While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse.
The security services have played a central -- and often mysterious -- role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.

Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist, co-founder, and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services' activities. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and BBC. He is co-author with Irina Borogan of The New Nobility. The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. He lives in London.
Irina Borogan is an investigative journalist, co-founder, and deputy editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services' activities. Borogan has reported on terrorism in Yugoslavia, tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has extensively chronicled the Kremlin's campaign to gain greater control of civil society. She is co-author with Andrei Soldatov of The New Nobility. The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. Her reporting has also been featured in the New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and BBC. She lives in London.