Publications

Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth

How did Vladimir Putin galvanise the Russian people to back his genocidal war in Ukraine and why are so many of them willing to embrace fascism?

“Books to Read in 2023” - Financial Times

“Invaluable” - Diplomatic Courier

This vivid, on-the-ground narrative reveals how Russia’s fascist generation came into being–and the dark future that awaits the country if that hold cannot be broken. Wartime Russia is drowning in fascist symbols. Zealous patriots attack journalists, opposition activists, and anyone suspected of betraying the motherland. Russians are urged to join the cause by hordes of online trolls and sleek videos of angry young men bellowing patriotic slogans. State television terrifies viewers with trumped up tales of anti-Russian conspiracies and genocidal yearnings. Child soldiers proudly parade across Red Square. 

This is Russia in the 2020s: a land of performative rage and nationalist untruth, where play-acting, pretence and broken promises are a way of life. But in a world where pretence has become the norm, a terrifying, apocalyptic mindset is seizing the Russians of tomorrow. 

As enrapturing as it is terrifying, Z Generation reveals how Russia ended up where it is today, and where its young people are headed: a fascist generation more zealous, violent and ideological than anything the country has seen before.

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Stalingrad Lives! Stories of Combat & Survival

The hidden story of how Russia’s greatest wartime epic was created at the front.

In the fall of 1942, only the city of Stalingrad stood between Soviet survival and defeat as Hitler’s army ran rampant. With the fate of the USSR hanging in the balance, Soviet propaganda chiefs sent their finest writers into the heat of battle. After six months of terrifying work, these men succeeded in creating an enduring epic of Stalingrad.

Their harrowing tales of valour and heroism offered hope for millions of readers. “Stalingrad Lives!” went the rallying cry: the city had to live if the nation was to stave off defeat. In Stalingrad Lives Ian Garner brings together a selection of short stories written at and after the battle.

These stories reveal, for the first time in English, the real Russian narrative of Stalingrad – an epic story of death, martyrdom, resurrection, and utopian beginnings. 

Following the authors into the hellish world of Stalingrad, Garner traces how tragedy was written as triumph. He uncovers how, dealing with loss and destruction on an unimaginable scale, Soviet readers and writers embraced the story of martyred Stalingrad, embedding it into the Russian psyche for decades to come.  Featuring lost work by Vasily Grossman alongside texts by luminaries such as Konstantin Simonov, Viktor Nekrasov, and Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalingrad Lives offers a unique cultural perspective on the Soviet Union at war.

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The Myth of Stalingrad in Soviet & Russian Literature

My doctoral work, The Myth of Stalingrad, explored the centrality of Stalingrad to Soviet identity formation in the wartime and post-war period.

You can read it for free online.