Masha Gessen Explains Horror, Humor and Hope for the Future

Masha Gessen’s book The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia is the winner of the Library’s 2018 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. A defining account of Russia’s post-Soviet era, it asks how the country’s prospects for democracy disappeared under the rule of Vladimir Putin. Taking on a novelistic approach, Gessen wove together the stories of four protagonists born in the last decade of the Soviet Union, earning last year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction. Gessen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has also been a contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author of several books.