The Future is History - How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen

An extremely interesting book, both thought provoking and chillingly frightening. I usually like Masha Gessen's column in the New Yorker, and the book's subject always fascinated me - how, after the fall of Communist Soviet Union, Russia evolved back to the same kind of non-democratic regime it had before; besides, the analysis of the drift to authoritarianism, intolerance and democratic deficit is extremely relevant now, when we are witnessing it not only in former dictatorships but in the heart of the Western world.

The book is well structured and researched, following the lives of four young people born in the 1980s and three older intellectuals. Their lives and development are depicted along the context of the changing political and social atmosphere; the turbulent 1990s and the rise of Putin until the present undemocratic, nationalist and chauvinistic regime are chillingly clear. It's a depressing read in a way, also a kind of very timely warning. I could do with less references to psychoanalysis, which is a somewhat outdated theory, but it's a minor shortcome.

It's terribly sad to watch how countries that have been authoritarian for the most part of their existence and where for a time a window of democratic hope opened revert to authoritarianism - like Russia, Brazil, Turkey, even Hungary or Poland - but even worse is to witness the same tendency, through a rise in populism, nationalism, xenophobia and intolerance, in countries that have been democratic for a long time - like the US, Britain, France, Israel, even Sweden. It looks like madness has taken possession of the Western world, as it forgets the values that gave us the longest and most prosperous period of peace in our long History.