The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

By Masha Gessen

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Book Overview

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time

Format:Paperback

Language:English

ISBN:1594634548

ISBN13:9781594634543

Release Date:October 2018

Publisher:Riverhead Books

Length:544 Pages

Weight:1.25 lbs.

Dimensions:1.4" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Related Subjects

The Cold War The Soviet Union Totalitarianism History Political Science Politics & Social Sciences

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Personal Accounts of the Transition from the USSR to Putin

Published by Andy , 3 years ago

This book is mistitled, because as it makes abundantly clear, totalitarianism DIDN'T reclaim Russia: Russia abandoned totalitarian internationalism in favor of nationalist authoritarianism. But that isn't the book's real focus anyway: it's the story of several people who lived through the collapse of the USSR, the triumph of Yeltsin, and the emergence of Putin. There's a good deal of historical description, but the narrative is all about how their lives were impacted by the neo-fascism of the Putin regime. It's very interesting, but extremely tendentious as it's told strictly from what might be described as an American liberal perspective intent on painting the new Russia as an evil empire. Only one of the subjects is pro-Putin and is presented in a completely dismissive way. It's all a little too one-sided for me, but nevertheless a fascinating picture of the wheel of history as it cycles back through one of its many phases.