The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

Alexander Nikolaevich ultimately concluded that the terror could not be understood. The explanations offered by his colleagues and any number of historians—that Stalin was mentally ill, that he suffered from paranoid delusions—explained nothing. The tyrant had had any number of his relatives, and the relatives of his wives, executed. One time, Alexander Nikolaevich discovered, Stalin invited an old friend back in Georgia to Moscow for a reunion. They dined and drank—Stalin took pride in his hospitality and his menus, which he personally curated.7 Later the same night, the friend was arrested in his hotel room. He was executed before dawn. This could not be explained with any words or ideas available to man.8 Alexander Nikolaevich could not understand it, but he could try to describe it. The Soviet state was based on punishment. As Young Pioneers, children were taught to criticize one another and themselves in a group setting, reveling in the details of their shortcomings, the intricacies of blame, the ecstasy of repentance, and the imagined precision of the penalties.