Masha Gessen - "The Trump-Putin Connect: What We Imagine and Why"

AmherstCollege
AmherstCollege
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Published 2017-08-09
Noted for her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Gessen has written about a range of topics, including LGBTQ rights, Russia’s Jewish state and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She was born and spent much of her childhood in Moscow before moving with her Jewish family to the United States. After the fall of the Soviet Union, she returned to Moscow, where she and others created post-Soviet Russia’s first weekly magazine, Itogi. She also served as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow-based LGBT rights organization Triangle; as the head of U.S. News & World Report’s Moscow bureau; and as chief editor of Vokrug Sveta, a popular-science journal. She was dismissed from this position at Russia’s oldest magazine after refusing to send a reporter to cover a nature conservation event featuring Putin, considering it political exploitation of environmental concerns.

As a journalist living in Moscow, she experienced the rise of Putin firsthand. Her 2012 bestselling biography The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin—hailed as “an unflinching indictment of the most powerful man in Russia” by The Wall Street Journal—delivers a chilling account of the rise and reign of one of the most influential figures in world politics.

She is also the author of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot—named a Best Book of 2014 by NPR and The Guardian—about a Russian punk rock group arrested for staging an unauthorized performance protest opposing Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Her 2015 book The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, about the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine.

Her most recent book, Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, was hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “one of the 20th century’s most chilling stories of struggle, perseverance, and despair.”

A fluent writer in Russian and English, Gessen is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Harper’s, Vanity Fair and Slate, among other publications.
All Comments (21)
  • @dali_hemingway2197
    It’s not the bully that frightens me but the cowards who refuse to confront him/her.
  • @FC-rg1vk
    She’s so right. They share the same disdain
  • @wadegruber2119
    I like how she pointed out that the way they lie is similar, not actually trying to convince people. I just saw a video of a woman press member ask Putin about his jailing and killing political opponents. Putin answered by bringing up the January 6th rioters who are currently being prosecuted and seeing jail time, to say that is the US doing the same, when that is so obviously not the kind of jailing of political opponents (politicians) the questioner was talking about. It blew my mind that he would answer in such a stupid way.
  • @appletree6898
    Her discussion of parallel structures to appease the president and safeguard the government was so prescient, as we can see now with Bob Woodward's book and the anonymous NY Times op-ed.
  • @OrganNLou
    One of the great writers and speakers of our time!!!
  • @mishacknthane1060
    They are the best, I recently discovered them and I'm hooked. I'm making notes when they speak
  • @SueFerreira75
    5 years later, just after Putin has invaded Ukraine, it would be interesting to see if Masha Gessen's thoughts on Trump and Putin have changed and if so in which way.
  • @abigaileggleston9108
    "Because eventually, there will be some kind of post-Trumpian future, and the health of the public sphere will in large part determine what that future looks like". Prophetic words. I just bought your book.
  • @awuma
    A lot more has come out since this talk concerning Trump's Russian links and the Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.