The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
by Masha Gessen
Seven lives. Three decades. One slow disappearance.
For you if
you are watching the country change faster than you can name it and need someone who has seen this before
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$19 MSRP · Paperback
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Gessen follows seven Russians across three decades — from the Soviet collapse to Putin's consolidation of power — and watches them lose, one by one, the ability to be who they are in public. The book doesn't argue that Russia became a totalitarian state; it demonstrates it, through the diminishment of specific people in specific rooms. What the state took first was the ability to name things accurately: a demonstration became a riot, a journalist became an enemy of the people, a fact became a matter of perspective. Gessen writes grief with the rigor of a reporter and the precision of someone who understands exactly what is being lost. This is what it costs, told through lives, not abstractions.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Russia
- Voice
- Written by a Russian author
Gessen won the National Book Award for this in 2017, and the book has only gotten more relevant since. The mechanism it describes — a government that controls what can be said until people no longer know what is true — is not a Russian problem. It is a problem with a Russian case study.
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Citizenfour(2014)
dir. Laura Poitras
Filmed in the room where the leak actually happened.
Laura Poitras films Edward Snowden's first meetings with journalists in a Hong Kong hotel room as he hands over evidence of mass NSA surveillance.
Why it’s here: Poitras was already filming when Snowden reached out, so this isn't reconstructed after the fact — it's the actual hotel room, the actual first read of the documents, tension that isn't staged because nobody knew yet how it would end.
The Death of Stalin(2017)
dir. Armando Iannucci
Succession played as the farce it basically was.
Soviet officials scramble for power in the chaotic days after Stalin's death, played as farce that never loses sight of how many people the farce actually killed.
Why it’s here: Turns the actual, undignified scramble after Stalin's death into slapstick without softening what any of it cost — the comedy is the argument that authoritarian succession is always this undignified, not an exception made for laughs.
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Anne Applebaum
The network behind every strongman.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
How to Be a Fascist: A Manual
Michela Murgia
The fascist media playbook, step by step.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Birthday Party
Harold Pinter
The menace of small talk.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Without You There Is No Us
Suki Kim
Teaching English to Pyongyang's elite. Undercover.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
