Rating: 4/5 arrested protesters
Author: Masha Gessen
Amazon Link:
referral program on hold :(
The Future is History was an intriguing perspective of Russia from a native Russian who has lived through and participated in many key events in recent Russian history. Masha Gessen provides a narrative that is both deeply personal and massive in scope. She has been on the progressive side of Russian social movements for many years and has met a number of key players in the events that would eventually lead Russia to where we stand today. Her story is woven through the larger narrative in a way that makes the text readable and underlines the personal impact of a nation’s heavy-handed social regulations. Russia is a complicated political environment, but Gessen does an excellent job of taking it apart piece-by-piece and providing the context that each individual moment in history deserves, allowing it to be understood from a human perspective.
From a western viewpoint, Russia can be enigmatic in it’s underlying social framework and motivations. The people of Russia are distinctly different from their western counterparts and are unique in that they have been created from an environment that is deeply entrenched with historical norms surrounding distribution of power, wealth, and a familiarity with authority that is monolithic and unlike anything seen in the west. Russia’s history is, and should be, a source of pride to it’s people, but that history also brings with it a crushing amount of inertia that makes progressive social movements much more difficult and raises the stakes for those involved. This text is as much a story of Putin, his rise to power, and means of control as it is about navigating the political landscape as a young person who finds themselves in a nation of people who seem to be rejecting themselves. Her fellow Russians seem to be taking comfort in a past that offers no future to those who want to move their society forward towards western ideals of individual freedom. The conflict of love for one’s country and love for one’s identity is jarring and difficult to maintain without feeling immediately overwhelmed. Gessen does a spectacular job of describing that conflict in a way that makes the situation recognizable but foreboding. The case she makes for Russia’s slow descent into totalitarianism is clear and troubling, and surely will continue as long as the Russian people continue to accept and enable a society in which the concentration of power is allowed to progress.
Gessen’s book is very good. It is well written, well paced, and packed with historical perspective. It isn’t a definitive hard-edged recounting of Russian history; it is a human story and filled with the sort of softness that the human perspective brings to history. This might not be suited for someone purely interested in concrete historical review, but I would recommend it for anyone who wants human context coupled with historical perspective.