136 Quotes by Masha Gessen

Rigidity is always the opposite of the search for truth.

A constant state of low-level dread made people easy to control, because it robbed them of the sense that they could control anything themselves. This was not the sort of anxiety that moved people to action and accomplishment. This was the sort of anxiety that exceeded human capacity.

Science gradually yielded to propaganda, and as a result propaganda tended more and more to represent itself as science.”4.

When you’re part of the opposition you want to stay. It’s part of your identity. You’re useless if you leave. You feel like you have failed.

Putin needed an enemy, an Other, against which to mobilize. LGBT people are really convenient: we’re sort of the ultimate foreign agent.

One time, Alexander Nikolaevich discovered, Stalin invited an old friend back in Georgia to Moscow for a reunion. They dined and drank – Stalin took pride in his hospitality and his menus, which he personally curated.7 Later the same night, the friend was arrested in his hotel room. He was executed before dawn. This could not be explained with any words or ideas available to man.8.

In the fall of 2000, a group of Russian Olympic athletes met with Putin and complained that the lack of a singable anthem demoralized them in competitions and made their victories feel hollow. The old Soviet anthem had been so much better this way, they said.

The Soviet regime robbed people not only of their ability to live freely but also of the ability to understand fully what had been taken from them, and how.

It’s not natural for people in the opposition to leave. It’s always a personal catastrophe.