This book was many things - shocking, eye-opening, heartbreaking, addictive, depressing and, at every stage, deeply impressive. The way Masha Gessen alternates between zooming in on the lives of her half-dozen real-life protagonists and zooming out to provide the context of political developments in Russia through the eras of Perestroika, the fall of the Soviet Union, the attempts at restructuring during the 90s, and the rising wave of resurrected totalitarianism during the Putin years, makes for a truly unique and fascinating structure. I was also impressed with the tone of the book, which is relentlessly factual and reflects the dedication and depth of Gessen's journalistic integrity. I'd recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone who wants a full picture of the clusterfuck Russia has become since - well, since ever, really, but especially since the 90s.

Superb illustration of Russia's slide into totalitarianism over the past three decades, through the lives of four ordinary Russians and three members of the intelligentsia. I'm impressed how Gessen finds these people - a young gay man in a rural town, the daughter of a businesswoman, a grandson of a Soviet politician, the daughter of a Boris Nemtsov, an assassinated dissident.Yet Gessen is intelligentsia, and so she best converses with others, as they grapple with the seismic changes of the past quarter century. These include a psychiatrist, bringing the desperately needed treatments of mental health to a country that once abused it as a tool for political control and a pollster who sees the attitudes of his compatriots regress back to the time of Homo Sovieticus. Looming in the distance is Aleksandr Dugin, fellow traveler of Vladimir Putin, occasional conspiracy theorist, a fanatical priest against , or idolizing the West. The data scientist, to his great horror, finds a nostalgia for the Soviet regime, and Masha Gessen prescribes it as a "recurrent illness", like syphilis. Of course, "totalitarianism" is a loaded term, and many within the social sciences, myself included, would bristle at the use of such a term. But Gessen at least makes a case for it - "not as deadly", yet, but with recognizable symptoms. Gessen's hypothesis for how this happened is fuzzy - some Freudian speculation about a "death drive" - but her reportage and narration are superb. She best notes the "March of the Millions" protests in 2012, and the invasion of Crimea in 2014, and Putin's presentation of events. The totalitarian government is obsessed with the past, forever remaking the past in its own image. As for everything else, - there is no future.

When the word totalitarianism is used in casual Western speech, it conjures the image of a monstrous society in which force is applied to every person at all times. Of course, that would be impossibly inefficient, even for an extremely inefficient state such as the Soviet Union. The economy of force in totalitarian societies is achieved through terror. Totalitarianism establishes its own social contract, in which most people will be safe from violence most of the time, provided they stay within certain boundaries and shoulder some of the responsibility for keeping other citizens within the same boundaries. The boundaries are ever-shiftingArendt described totalitarian societies as producing a state of constant flux and inconsistencyand this requires the population to be ever-vigilant in order to stay abreast of the shifts. A hypersensitivity to signals is essential for survival.Gripping. Anyone who naively thinks that history is progressive, that we're all moving forward in an enlightened direction, should spend a little time with this book. Masha Gessen writes with force and the authority of an excellent researcher, journalist, and Russian native. The book is a clear, salient introduction to Russia's troubled recent history (1980-present), and it sticks with you after you put it down.