My Russia
At the height of the Cold War during her freshman year of high school, CNN’s Jill Dougherty developed an obsession with Russia. Over the next half-century, she studied in Leningrad, traveled the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program, lived in Moscow, and reported on the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.
Jill’s life is intertwined with Putin’s in interesting ways. They are the same age and share an alma mater. Jill took the position of CNN Moscow Bureau Chief at the same time Putin ascended to Prime Minister and then President. She at first believed him to be primarily an economic reformer, the Western-oriented leader Russia needed. For years she defended him to colleagues and friends, insisting that foreign critics misunderstood his post-Soviet point of view. But as Putin used his growing power to strangle the nation’s independent press, her feelings began to change. When she reported live on the ground to millions of CNN viewers around the world as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022, she realized the leader with whom she had sympathized was a tyrant threatening to destroy a place and a people she had come to love.
Russia is a memoir that traces Jill’s fascination with Russia and shares the insights into the country, its people, and its leader she has gleaned through forty years of reporting. Readers will see Russia’s evolution through the eyes of the dedicated, compassionate, cancer-surviving, gay woman they have watched on cable since 1983.
Jill Dougherty was a CNN Correspondent for over thirty years and is now a CNN on-air Contributor, appearing frequently to provide reporting and analysis on Russia and related issues. She served as CNN Moscow Bureau Chief for nine years and held other posts at CNN including White House Correspondent, US Affairs Editor, Managing Editor for the Asia/Pacific Region, and Foreign Affairs Correspondent covering the US State Department.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Affairs Council, and the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Advisory Council, where she is a Global Fellow. She teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and has pursued research on Russia and the media as a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School and at the International Centre for Defence and Security in Estonia. She writes regularly for CNN.com, and her work has been published in The Atlantic, Politico, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC and speaks fluent Russian.