WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTIONFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS
CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST
BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW LOS ANGELES TIMES WASHINGTON POST BOSTON
GLOBE SEATTLE TIMES CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR NEWSWEEK PASTE and POP SUGARThe essential
journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how in the space of a
generation Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy.
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have
wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History Gessen follows the
lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of
age with unprecedented expectations some as the children and grandchildren of the very
architects of the new Russia each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs
activists thinkers and writers sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against
the machinations of the regime that would crush them all and against the war it waged on
understanding itself which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the
form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent The
Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
