We. Diary of a Downfall is Dmitry Glukhovsky’s attempt to answer the question, “What happened to Russia?” A series of journalistic essays and magazine columns—each merely a reaction to the news and the little things of life—come together to form a history of Putin’s regime from 2012 to the start of the war in Ukraine.  Looking back from the present day and tracing events step by step, Glukhovsky shows how freedom and democracy disappeared, how security services grew increasingly brutal, how the ghosts of the USSR returned, how state ideology became militarized, and how the country prepared for war. Each text is accompanied by commentary written by the author in 2024, in which he treats himself and his own perception as a historical object. We. Diary of a Downfall reveals with disconcerting clarity how much we refused to see as Russia methodically and persistently moved towards militant tyranny.