Masha Gessen
How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
In her latest book, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, journalist Masha Gessen follows the lives of four Russians, born as the Soviet Union crumbled, at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children or grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own – as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers and writers, as sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths not only against the machinations of the regime that would seek to crush them all (through censorship, intimidation, violence) but also against the war it waged on understanding itself, ensuring the unobstructed re-emergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today’s terrifying and seemingly unstoppable totalitarian state. The book is a powerful and urgent cautionary tale by contemporary Russia’s most fearless inquisitor and a masterful account of the period from glasnost to the present iron-fist rule of Vladimir Putin. In this event Gessen reveals how the hope of democracy gave way to a devastating new strain of autocracy.
Image credit Masha Gessen (c) Tanya Sazansky
