The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

Back in the dorm, talking to young women who were his new friends, Lyosha said, “Putin reminds me of some sort of miniature military dictator.” The women agreed. When he said “miniature,” Lyosha did not really mean Putin’s size—more the general sense that whatever frightening words his new books offered, the phenomena they were describing did not feel quite real. Lyosha, for one, did not have the sense of living in a military dictatorship, or a military anything, or any kind of dictatorship. He was a student at a very politically liberal department, where instructors ridiculed Putin mercilessly, as though engaged in some sort of competition for the wittiest put-down. The facts were there—in just two years, Putin had greatly weakened the power of elected officials by creating federal oversight over governors and giving the federal center the right to fire elected governors; reversed judicial reform; and monopolized national broadcast television in the hands of the Kremlin. So while his regime could not yet be called authoritarian, that seemed to be the direction in which it was headed. This transitional state, Lyosha learned, was called an “authoritarian situation”—meaning, authoritarianism could happen here.