Quotes from Masha Gessen

Incomprehensible messaging is a very important part of Russian propaganda.

If human rights are an attribute of being human, then we must consider the fact that tens of millions of displaced people around the world have been rendered less than human.

Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers - when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry.

Now, academics are not always the easiest people to talk to, and the scholarly papers aren't always the easiest papers to read, but frankly, psychology papers, especially papers and books on terrorism, are very easy to read, and journalists should be reading them.

Since 9/11 we have somehow come to accept the 'radicalization' narrative, which basically holds that people become terrorists through a series of consecutive, traceable steps laid out for them by large international Islamic organizations. Reality is messier, and also smaller.

Putin, I believe, was actually born to be a KGB agent. And I say born because I think that his father was also an agent of the secret police in Russia.

I've learned over the years to hear what Putin is railing against in his own railing way.

I worked both as a Russian journalist and an American journalist and ran a bunch of magazines in Moscow over the course of about 20 years.

I really can't abide conspiracy theories, because I believe that everything in the world stems from idiocy and incompetence. That's certainly true of most of what's happened in Russia under Putin.

Both Trump and Putin use language primarily to communicate not facts or opinions but power: it's not what the words mean that matters but who says them and when. This makes it impossible to negotiate with them and very difficult for journalists to cover them.

I realized - I've been an opposition journalist in Russia for a long time. And I've often considered how real risks are and how much of a risk I can take.

I have experienced power as a journalist. On three different occasions, when I wrote about individual immigrants or refugees, the article - or, in one case, my presence in the courtroom - appeared to positively change the outcome of their cases.

Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.

Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the early 1990s: being gay was no longer criminal or shameful, but it was still not a topic for polite conversation or public discussion.

To exercise ignorance, racist prejudice, a love of power and total disregard for factual accuracy, one has to inhabit a world where everything can mean anything and nothing is certain.

Putin set out to build a mafia state. He didn't set out to build a totalitarian regime. But he was building his mafia state on the ruins of a totalitarian regime. And so we end up with a mafia state and a totalitarian society.

When totalitarian regimes are established, they at least have the illusion of the single-minded purpose. But once they establish the stature that's necessary for a totalitarian regime, they tend to flail.

Poverty and scarcity are actually very good for totalitarian societies. They maintain that sense of mobilization that's essential for totalitarian societies.

every totalitarian regime forms a type of human being on whom it relies for its stability. The shaping of the New Man is the regime's explicit project, but its product is not so much a vessel for the regime's ideology as it is a person best equipped to survive in a given society. The regime, in turn, comes to depend on this newly shaped type of person for its continued survival.

Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will break cement. Solzhenitsyn wrote, So the word is more sincere than concrete? So the word is not a trifle? Then may noble people begin to grow, and their word will break cement. [Nadya Tolokonnikova's closing statement]

Little Octobrists are future Young Pioneers. Little Octobrists are studious kids. They study hard, love school, and respect their elders. Little Octobrists are honest and truthful kids. Little Octobrists are fun-loving kids. They read and they draw, they play and they sing, and they stick together. Only those who work hard and persist earn the right to be called Little Octobrist.2

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

What distinguishes a totalitarian ideology is its utterly insular quality. It purports to explain the entire world and everything in it.

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.