Totalitarianism
Our Columnists
Putin’s War Hits Close to Home
Russia has faced a series of recent attacks, but, in the absence of public space, military losses are personal tragedies, not collective experiences.
By Masha Gessen
Daily Comment
A Russian Journalist Who Stayed Behind
As the war escalates, real reporting from within Putin’s circle has become nearly impossible.
By David Remnick
Second Read
The Russian Novel That Foresaw—but Underestimated—Totalitarianism
Yevgeny Zamyatin, the author of “We,” was both the original writer of totalitarian terror and one of its original victims.
By Masha Gessen
Our Columnists
Trump’s Defense Was an Insult to the Proceedings and an Assault on Reason
The trial affirmed Hannah Arendt’s insight that a pair of paradoxical qualities characterize the audiences of totalitarian leaders: gullibility and cynicism.
By Masha Gessen
Our Columnists
The Disbelief and Horror of Election Night Were Captured by a Russian Poet in 1933
A line from “Stalin’s Epigram,” by Osip Mandelstam, kept flashing and burrowing in my mind: “We live without sensing the country beneath us.”
By Masha Gessen
The Political Scene Podcast
Loneliness, Tyranny, and the Coronavirus
Masha Gessen joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the social and political consequences of living in isolation.
Our Columnists
The Political Consequences of Loneliness and Isolation During the Pandemic
Isolation, according to Hannah Arendt, is the inability to act together with others—which is the source of a person’s political power.
By Masha Gessen