The Future Is History (National Book Award Winner): How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia Kindle Edition

One of the things that you discover in this book is the use of pedophilia accusations as a political weapon is rife in Putin's Russia. We already knew that Putin has poisoned the US political system and in particular the Republican Party. But if you were wondering why QAnon and GOP nutcases like Marjorie Taylor Greene are so obsessed with this smear, wonder no longer. This is right out of the Putin playbook. It worked for him in Russia, he's trying to make it work for him here, both through his poisoning of social media and through his overt links with the religious right.Gessen follows a handful of Russian families from the end of the Soviet era, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, through the chaotic, but free, 1990s and then through the return to totalitarianism after Putin comes from nowhere to become Russian president.For the most part it works very well. It owes a lot to Tolstoy's War and Peace (don't be put off by that), which also explored the impact of profound historical change through the lens of its impact on families, except this is non-fiction. Gessen herself admits War and Peace was her model. War and Peace has philosophical sections - Gessen, instead, and I think rightly so, analogously tries to explain the psychological reasons why many Russians have willingly returned to totalitarianism. I found some of the psychology stuff to be a bit heavy going, but ultimately I thought it was worthwhile and it's very much a minority of the book. You could, if you want, skim that material and still take a lot away.The Soviet era lasted 70 years, at least a couple generations. What happens when you take 150 million Russians who grew up in an utterly stultifying and static environment, where very little was subject to individual initiative, where your place in society was largely fixed based on who your parents were, where very little change was possible, where your entire life was subject to the state and where they were told they were the best in the world - and now, "set them free", in a country which has been stripped of its empire and is clearly, now, at best, a second-rate power.And the answer is you've got a situation ripe for disaster.It's interesting to contrast (Gessen touches briefly on contrasts with the former Soviet satellite states, but not specifically on East Germany) with the East German experience. Germany was very lucky that East Germany was so small relative to West, that it had only 40 years under a Soviet system (not 70), that it had near constant exposure to the West through West German TV, and that totalitarianism was done by the Soviets to them (rather than being homegrown), that West Germany was rich enough to fund a very generous safety net for East Germany, and that in joining West Germany, East Germany was joining an undoubted success.United Germany has still had to deal with pathologies (extreme right wing/extreme left wing movements) that have taken root in the former East Germany, but, by-and-large, those have been diluted by the healthier west. None of these things were true in Russia.And so, you have an entire country, in Russia, that is unable to reconcile itself to the changes that have occurred, and which is profoundly susceptible to anyone who can spin them a story of recaptured glory. We've seen that movie many times before.If you want to understand just how screwed up Russia is, and why it backs Putin in his insane ventures, this is, I think, required reading.

When I looked up “The Future Is History” on Amazon and saw the 1-star reviews left by obvious trolls, I just *knew* this book had to be dangerously good. So I bought it immediately. I had read several of Gessen's meticulous and eye-opening New Yorker pieces, but this book takes it to a whole new level.Gessen tells the story through seven dramatis personae, each “both ‘regular’, in that their experiences exemplified the experiences of millions of others, and extraordinary: intelligent, passionate, introspective, able to tell their stories vividly.” They give first-person accounts of the everyday ordeal of surviving true to oneself in Russia. Like Zhanna, daughter of popular opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and activist in her own right, whose life demonstrates some of the consequences of opposing the regime -- like exile, incarceration and murder. The story of Masha the journalist illustrates the perils of truthtelling. Pioneering psychotherapist Marina Arutyunyan tries to shepherd modern mental health to Russia through lacerating thickets of state-mandated ideology. Openly gay Lyosha tries to advocate for oppressed minorities without getting fired from his precarious university post.Through the lives of the protagonists, Gessen weaves the last century of Russian history. Stalin’s self-cannibalizing reign of terror is particularly chilling: “Stalin’s terror machine executed its executioners at regular intervals. In 1938 alone, forty-two thousand investigators who had taken part in the great industrial-scale purges were executed, as was the chief of the secret police, Nikolai Yezhov.” Stalin once invited an old friend from Georgia to Moscow for a reunion, and after lavishly wining and dining him, had him executed before dawn: “This could not be explained with any words or ideas available to man.”And that is the most astonishing aspect of this book: it is not fiction. The protagonists’ experiences are so logic-defying, so disheartening, and such violations of basic human decency as to exist in a separate universe that no novelist could concoct. And yet, this universe has an internal logic. Perhaps it's best explained through Hannah Arendt, whose three-volume “Origins of Totalitarianism” Gessen deftly scrunches down to a few essential paragraphs: “What distinguishes a totalitarian ideology is its utterly insular quality. It purports to explain the entire world and everything in it. There is no gap between totalitarian ideology and reality because totalitarian ideology contains all of reality within itself.”And yet, the book reads like a novel, which is why I don’t want to give away too much. Who is Homo sovieticus? For whom do Russians vote in the “Greatest Russian Ever” (aka “Name of Russia”) contest year after year? What’s going to happen to Boris Nemtsov after he defies Putin? Do our heroes avoid getting beat up and arrested at the demonstrations? Why is Putin so popular in Russia?One pervasive theme of the book is the hegemony of doublethink over the Russian psyche. Coined by Orwell in “1984”, doublethink is the necessity of maintaining two contradictory beliefs for survival, e.g. publicly supporting the government ideology while knowing that it oppresses your very existence.This is some crazy-making stuff that Russians seem to have been put through for over a century. And yet, there are still people who fight for truth, healing, and freedom. Over and over, they rise to attend banned protests very likely to land them in jail (or worse). Their stories of stupendous bravery and selflessness consistently inspire.And lest you as a Westerner think that you’re somehow safe because, oh, this is something happening elsewhere, please note that the recent rise of authoritarianism in countries like America takes its playbook straight out of Russia. Attacks on the press, construction of alternate realities, propagation of fake news, persecution of minorities, and the shameless grabbing of executive power: it’s all happening right now.And you know what else? We’ve seen it all before: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao. So don’t read this book just because it’s a riveting account of life in what’s still an undiscovered continent for most Westerners. Don’t read it just because it’s a tour de force of journalistic craft and bravery. Read it because it also informs your life as an American, German, Frenchman, Hungarian, or anyone who values the freedom of human life and ideas. Read it so that you may be impelled to take action.-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., author & public speaking trainerPS: Congratulations to Masha Gessen for winning the National Book Award. Thoroughly deserved.

According to Masha Gessen, the reality of life within Russia is unfathomable. The brief shining moment of proto-democracy was engulfed in a wave of corruption and totalitarianism that persists to this day. Gessen shares this story by following the lives of seven Russians from the end of the Cold War through the Trump era. Though Russia is often described as an oligarchy, Gessen makes a compelling case that Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of favorable events and political savvy to entrench himself as a totalitarian.A narrative that packs a punch, “The Future is History” creates an eyewitness feel that instills the same feeling of foreboding as the Russians that watch their fragile democracy melt away.

Time consuming as a read. But well placed perspectives

This book follows the lives of four different families (sometimes individuals) who were living in Russia during the old USSR, experienced a brief period of democracy in the 1990s, and then were swept up into Vladimir Putin’s new USSR in the 21st century.It is set out like a novel and reads like one. And like a Russian one too - grim, painful, dark and tragic - something Dostoevsky might write. Often enough, experiencing vicariously the crushing weight of a repressive regime is too much to bear when you are immersed in this work. I took breaks from the book for days at a time. Yet I always returned. The tale is eminently readable, the writing excellent, and I had to find out what happened to all the real-life characters.Unfortunately, the far right is on the rise. The autocracy of Putin’s Russia, its lies and misinformation and conspiracy theories used to snare the innocent and naive, sound all too familiar to events only recently past and still an ongoing part of the present in North America. Putin’s Russia is in the news regularly too, usually for nefarious reasons. Gessen’s book helps us understand not only Putin and his new USSR, but what is happening in parts of the American democracy. It is incredibly relevant in 2021.

Extremely useful to understand Russia's failed transition to freedom and democracy. Putin appears for what he is, an undemocratic autocrat. The pre-conditions for an invasion of Ukraine are all described in this book: from the hate for Western democracies to the nostalgia for the Russian Empire.

This book has become one of my favorites. I read it twice an each time I learned something different. Is a must read book not only to understand Russia but the current political trends that the world is living.

El libro vale la pena y el servicio ha sido impecable.