Books Podcast: How totalitarianism reclaimed Russia

In this week’s Spectator Books Podcast, I’m talking to Russia’s most prominent dissident journalist, Masha Gessen, about her National Book Award-winning new book The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. In the book, which she calls a “non-fiction novel”, Masha attempts to give a properly rounded sense — from high politics to the everyday lives of Russian citizens — of why post-Soviet Russia, rather than embracing Western liberal democracy, took a darker turn. We talk about how she put the book together, what went wrong, whether there’s any hope for the future — and what it was like to meet one on one with Vladimir Putin.

You can listen to our conversation here:

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