7/2/2023 0 Comments Gessen the future is history![]() ![]() But taken together, their life stories form an extraordinarily detailed picture of the country’s fraught recent past. ![]() The two men and two women at the heart of this rich and deeply reported book are neither famous nor blessed with unique talents. In Putin’s Russia, Gessen writes, millions have once again “agreed to live under a sort of dictatorship in exchange for stability.” It’s a situation that sometimes leaves her subjects feeling hopeless: “There was a specific Russian expression: budushchego net, ‘There is no future.’ As though it could indeed be canceled.” A decade shy of middle age, they’ve witnessed the collapse of the Soviet state, the economic and social upheavals of the 1990s and, in this century, the ascent of a next-generation autocrat. “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia” is a remarkable portrait of an ever-shifting era, as told through the experiences of four people who were born in the waning years of the USSR. ![]()
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