Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist. Gessen writes primarily in English but also in her native Russian. In addition to being the author of several non-fiction books, she has been a prolific contributor to such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate, Vanity Fair, and others, she has been a staff writer for The New Yorker. Gessen was on the board of directors of the Moscow-based LGBT rights organization Triangle between 1993 and 1998. In an extensive October 2008 profile of Vladimir Putin for Vanity Fair, Gessen reported that the young Putin had been "an aspiring thug" and that "the backward evolution of Russia began" within days of his inauguration in 2000. 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. Two features distinguish this work which covers developments from Gorbachev to Putin: first, its personalised vantage point; and second, its attempt to establish a conclusive definition of the regime and the forces that formed it. Enjoy free online English audiobook “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”, a novel by Masha Gessen.
