Masha Gessen

In Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen offers a powerful and insightful analysis of America's political landscape during the Trump presidency. Through a compelling narrative that draws from her own experiences growing up in the Soviet Union and her decades-long career covering authoritarian regimes in Russia, Gessen meticulously delineates the erosion of democratic norms in the United States. She constructs a cohesive...

On 21 February 2012, five members of an obscure feminist post-punk collective called Pussy Riot staged a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Dressed in their trademark brightly coloured dresses and balaclavas, the women performed their song 'Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!' in front of the altar. The performance lasted only 40 seconds but...

The Future is History by Masha Gessen is a riveting exploration of modern Russia’s turbulent journey from the fall of the Soviet Union to its current iteration as a formidable, authoritarian state. Spanning several decades, the book meticulously chronicles the lives of four Russians, who were born during the collapse of the USSR, at a time brimming with hopes of...

'A luminous study' Luke Harding, Guardian'Courageous and shocking' Katy Guest, Books of the Year, Independent on SundayHow did a small-minded, low-level KGB operative come to control the world's largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroy years of progress, making Russia once more a threat to her own people and to the world?Masha Gessen shows that when Vladimir Putin,...

The essayist needs the objective world, writes M. Gessen, the guest editor of The Best American Essays 2026, asking, But does the objective world need the essayist? There is no straightforward answer to Gessen’s query, yet the authors in this volume tackle it headfirst. In doing so, they provide a mosaic depicting the year 2025, examining the degradation of American...

Masha Gessen's last memory of Russia was the crowd of red-eyed relatives gathered at the airport in Moscow in 1981 to wave goodbye forever to her fourteen-year-old self, her brother and her parents. Unwilling to have their children grow up bearing the weight of the same anti-Semitism that they and their parents had, Masha's mother and father were emigrating to...

The Man Without a Face, written by the distinguished journalist and author Masha Gessen, delves deeply into the enigmatic rise of Vladimir Putin, a figure who emerged from relative obscurity to become one of the most powerful and controversial leaders of our time. The book offers a comprehensive and chilling portrait of Putin's ascent to the pinnacle of Russian politics,...