What does the head of the Kremlin think about? What are his hopes and aims for the lands bordering Russia, for Europe, and even the world? In January 2014, the Kremlin sent its senior civil servants, governors and party bigwigs a special New Year's present: philosophy books, by 19th and 20th century Russian thinkers. This reading list is not optional: the president himself has cited these authors in landmark speeches, and they need to understand what he means. The most persistent of the bunch will find these great works strangely familiar, full of the national leader's role in an 'authentic' democracy, the importance of being conservative, the urgency of rooting morality in religion, and the historic struggle of the Russian people against the timeless hostility of the West. President Putin is the man who manages and manipulates these existential anxieties. And since the annexation of Crimea, the need to decrypt his vision for the nation-propelled by the Kremlin's Eurasian neo-imperialists and prophets of `Russian-way' conservatism-has become more pressing than ever. In this revealing and engrossing book, Michel Eltchaninoff invites us inside the psyche of the Russian president for a better understanding of his doctrine and geopolitical vision. He offers answers to an urgent question for our 21st century world: what is Vladimir Putin thinking?

What drives Marine Le Pen and France's Front National? Has her party really changed its ways, or is she merely rebranding its old ideas and policies for a new era? In the age of Brexit and Trump, France too has seen a growing audience for identity-based politics. Under 'Marine', the FN is enjoying unprecedented success. But what's her secret? This is a probing investigation into the philosophy of Marine Le Pen's FN. It seeks answers in her speeches, in the history of French nationalism and in revealing interviews with those on the far right--including Jean-Marie Le Pen himself. Michel Eltchaninoff exposes a vision of France tyrannised by liberalism and seduced by the offer of an uncompromising alternative: a Republic 'beyond Left and Right', defined by its enemies and aligned with Putin's Russia. Whatever Marine Le Pen is thinking, she has not forgotten the FN's roots. The French far right is now stronger than ever.

"We are the rebels asking for the storm, and believing that truth is only to be found in an endless search ... Two years of prison for Pussy Riot is our tribute to a destiny that gave us sharp ears, allowing us to sound the note A when everyone else is used to hearing G flat." In an extraordinary exchange of letters, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, imprisoned for taking part in Pussy Riot's anti-Putin performance, and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek discuss artistic subversion, political activism, and the future of democracy via the ideas of Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and even Laurie Anderson. Two radicals, one in a Russian forced labor camp, the other writing to her from far outside its walls, show passionately - across linguistic and generational divides - that "there is still a common cause worth fighting for." Touching, erudite, and worldly, their correspondence unfolds with poetic urgency. In association with Philosophie Magazine.