Russia and the World
This is the final chapter of the Russian Empire
Says Masha Gessen
Hardly anyone knows Russia and its history as well as Masha Gessen, who was a guest in the series “Europe in Discourse” in Vienna’s Burgtheater to discuss the war in Ukraine. I listened in.
Masha Gessen is a journalistic luminary. In their book The Future is History, which won the National Book Award, Gessen traced the transition from the Soviet Union to the Putinian mafia state, showing why the brief hope for a democratic Russia was not fulfilled. Furthermore, Gessen is a Russian-American essayist, and journalist on the New Yorker’s permanent staff and has written books on Putin and Trump that also unravel the systematics of these newer autocrats.
Some of what Gessen says is summarized and partially paraphrased by me as one wasn’t allowed to tape. I took notes.
Totalitarian Societies
Gessen explains that we tend to overestimate the role of ideologies in totalitarian societies. There are several reasons for this: one of them is the way history is made. It is text. The other reason is that we see totalitarian societies as ideologically driven, but ideologies are mostly cobbled together. And often only afterward. What changed in the February 23 speech — just before Russia…
