The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

Even Communist ideology was a shadow of its former self,

place where ideological controls were slightly relaxed to facilitate the production of minds useful to the Soviet military-industrial complex.

From what he could tell now that he had full access to existing documents, casualties of mass terror numbered about twenty million. That was just Stalin’s part of it:

humans play out that which they cannot remember.

I don’t know about that

The democratic revolution of 1991—the defeat of totalitarianism—was an event that existed in the sociologists’ minds but not in the minds of their respondents.

This is in 1994. Too soon?

Only 8 percent thought that the breakup of the Soviet Union had been a positive development. Seventy-five percent thought it had caused more harm,

the suppression not only of all local autonomy . . . but also of the autonomy of all public or semi-public institutions, charitable organizations, cultural associations, universities.

any ideology could become the basis of a totalitarian system if it could be encapsulated and coupled with terror.

academics began noting how much richer private life had been in the USSR than they had once thought, how inconsistent and how widely disregarded the ideology, and how comparatively mild police enforcement became after Stalin’s death.

Shortages are not mere deficits but also a way of organizing society through official hierarchical structures of access to goods

economic upheaval had the ability to make the authoritarian character dominant in society and to carry an authoritarian character to the top.

But the bad theater of it all, in which you were invited up onstage for a millisecond and not allowed to open your mouth, was insulting.

Russians had agreed to live under a sort of dictatorship in exchange for stability.

They liked to joke, and they loved a good funny banner, like I DIDN’T VOTE FOR THESE ASSHOLES, I VOTED FOR THE OTHER ASSHOLES, the runaway favorite among the many visual and textual gags held up on handwritten placards at Bolotnaya.

In other words, it was precisely the obscene manner of the rigging, not the fact of it, that caused the outrage—like

With vigilant citizens throwing fits in the stacks in one city after another, bookstores and libraries also had to err on the side of caution.18 Self-censorship was collective hostage-taking in one of its purest forms. It had kicked back in.

ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin’s ideological repertoire had consisted of the word “stability,”

For a person to tell other people to risk their freedom, to risk Russian jail, he had to be beyond reproach.

You need an adult, a figure of authority. Almost anyone willing to take charge will do. And then, if that someone wants to remain in charge, he will have to make sure that you continue to feel helpless.