The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

The rest of the survey left little room for hope. The percentage of people who said they were unhappy had more than doubled in five years—from 14 to 34 (though the share of those who said they were happy stayed steady at 46). A clue to what had made so many people so unhappy showed up in answers to another question, in which respondents were asked to rank the importance of changes that had occurred in the country. Barely half named things that could be considered accomplishments, such as political freedoms, the ability to travel, work, and study abroad, the right to open one’s own business, and the “option of living without regard for the authorities,” as the sociologists phrased it. An overwhelming majority saw the state’s failures as the most significant changes: the rise of unemployment, the “impoverishment of the people,” and a “weakening of Russian unity.”