Masha Gessen Quotes
It seems that probably Putin's father maintained some connection to the secret police throughout his life. One sign of that is that they had a telephone, and people didn't have telephones in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
I think that Russian meddling in the election is an important issue.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
If you grew up in Boston, you actually grew up thinking that Patriots' Day is a major American holiday, sort of like the other Fourth of July.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
There is no law that guarantees press access to the White House. Communication was lessening during the Obama years. There was every reason to suspect that Trump was going to create an adversarial relationship and that people were going to be faced with the impossible dilemma between sort-of-complicity and access.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
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.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
When your doctor and neighbours and child's schoolteachers know you are gay, there is no closet for you to hide in.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
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.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
I mean, hunger strike is almost a ritual in a Russian prison colony. It actually has been going back to Soviet times. It's a way of protesting.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
Many Americans have been looking for an explanation for Mr. Trump's apparent adoration of Mr. Putin. How can a powerful, wealthy American man hold affection for the tyrannical, corrupt leader of a hostile power?
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
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.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
In war you're either a collaborator or you're a resistor. I mean you don't get to be neutral.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
The most difficult and, in some ways, the most rewarding thing I've ever been through was emigrating as a teenager.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
I looked at Putin and was terrified from the very beginning. That makes me look very prescient because he actually turned out to be exactly the monster that I thought he was.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
Dictators fall when they're overconfident; they stay in power when they're paranoid.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
I had a very humane, what the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova would probably have called 'vegetarian,' experience of migration. It involved planes and trains - the actual compartments of passenger trains - and not grueling walking and riding on the roofs of trains.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
Putin is an uneducated, unintelligent, uncultured man who has no plan.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
My family immigrated to the States in 1981, when I was 14.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
I do a very good impersonation of an American - I went to high school here - but I've spent most of my life in Russia.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
Where incompetence is prized, it is ever-present.
Masha Gessen
Russian-American journalist, author,
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