
The Future Is History
How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
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Narrated by:
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Masha Gessen
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By:
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Masha Gessen
Winner of the 2017 National Book Award in Nonfiction
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards
Winner of the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award
Named a Best Book of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Paste, and Pop Sugar
The essential journalist and best-selling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy.
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and 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 against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
©2017 Masha Gessen (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"Fascinating and deeply felt." (The New York Times Book Review)
“Forceful and eloquent on the history of her native country, Gessen is alarming and pessimistic about its future as it doubles down on totalitarianism.” (Los Angeles Times)
“A remarkable portrait of an ever-shifting era.... Gessen weaves her characters’ stories into a seamless, poignant whole. Her analysis of Putin’s malevolent administration is just as effective...a harrowing, compassionate and important book.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
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Gessen humanizes modern Russians
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There's value in looking a bit deeper into the current Russian politics and events from a Russian perspective. Enjoyed the time spent.
Solid Perspective on a relevant topic
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Good read.
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A great American with a great Russian heritage.
Thank you for all your story.
Welcome to America.
Gordon Flygare
Ms Gessen is my special favorite author
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The Marriage of Depth and Detail
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If you can keep the characters straight...
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I was talking part in the interest of 2011-2012 which Masha had put so much attention to in book. I remember how much I was passed off with the absolutely unnecessary, but enormous manipulation of the voting in November 2011. And then I had realized that majority of people who surround me just love it...
Great writing and performance. But realization that future is history makes me cry.
Really, there is no future for us as a nation
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Hard to hear driving down the highway
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Absolutely fascinating
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Want to understand Russian invasion of Ukraine?
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