- Published: 26/10/2017
- ISBN: 9781783784004
- 153x20mm
- 528 pages
The Future is History
Masha Gessen
In The Future is History 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, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths not only against the machinations of the regime that would seek to crush them all (censorship, intimidation, violence) but also against the war it waged on understanding itself, ensuring the unobstructed emergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today’s terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. The Future is History is a powerful and urgent cautionary tale by contemporary Russia’s most fearless inquisitor.
£20.00
Indispensable
Pankaj Mishra, Guardian
The Future is History is a beautifully-written, sensitively-argued and cleverly-structured journey through Russia's failure to build democracy. The difficulty for any book about Russia is how to make the world's biggest country human-sized, and she succeeds by building her story around the lives of a half-dozen people, whose fortunes wax and wane as the country opens up, then closes down once more. It is a story about hope and despair, trauma and treatment, ideals and betrayal, and above all about love and cynicism. If you want to truly understand why Vladimir Putin has been able to so dominate his country, this book will help you
Oliver Bullough
Masha Gessen is a brave and eloquent critic of the Putin regime
Edward Lucas, The Times
From the Same Author
Masha Gessen on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Surviving Autocracy
Masha Gessen
We knew Trump’s range: government by gesture; obfuscation and lying; self-praise; stoking fear and issuing threats.
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
After the Olympics Left
Various Contributors
‘Once I came home at the end of August, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, nothing had.‘
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Mutations
Masha Gessen
‘With a disease as unpredictable as cancer, the opportunity to blame an actual person is an unexpected temptation.’