136 Quotes by Masha Gessen

It turned out that capitalism alone could make people not only rich and happy but also poor, hungry, miserable, and powerless.

To create, and to confront, one has to be an outcast.

In all societies, public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history -- political history and art history -- is made when someone effectively confronts the lie. But in really scary societies all public conversation is an exercise in using words to mean their opposites -- in describing the brave as traitorous, the weak as frightening, and the good as bad -- and confronting these lies is the most scary and lonely thing a person can do.

Some studies actually showed that that Russian drinkers lived longer than non-drinkers.[Michelle Parsons] suggested an explanation for the apparent vodka paradox: for what it is worth, alcohol may help people adapt to realities that otherwise make them want to curl up and die. Parsons, who called her book "Dying Unneeded", argued that Russians were dying early because they had nothing and no one to live for.

Faced with a brass band that was positioned to drown out free speech, Russian activists reacted to the potential confrontation with lemons. With activists eating lemons or pretending to, involuntary saliva reaction of the band made it impossible for them to interrupt.

[Hannah] Arendt wrote about the subjugation of public space - in effect the disappearance of public space, which, by depriving a person of boundaries and agency, rendered him profoundly lonely.

When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.

Lying is the message. Its not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power of the truth itself."The Putin Paradigm," New York Review of Books

Half of the population is behind bars and the other half is guarding them,' Russians have said of their country since the times of Stalin.