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Russia Quotes by Masha Gessen

51 Russia quotes by Masha Gessen

All Russia quotes Masha Gessen’s page

Masha Gessen points out that joining a legal protest in Russia can put a person at great risk. She describes how leaders like Putin and Trump use language as a tool for power rather than truth. She also mentions that Russian culture, despite political pressure, allows for personal variety and individuality.

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As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my children

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Incomprehensible messaging is a very important part of Russian propaganda.

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Putin is an uneducated, unintelligent, uncultured man who has no plan.

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You risk everything if you so much as join a legal protest demonstration in Russia. It raises the stakes.

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I think that Russian meddling in the election is an important issue.

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There aren't a lot of things that are extraordinary about Putin, but his greed is truly extraordinary.

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Putin, I believe, was actually born to be a KGB agent. And I say born because I think that his father was…

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Russians didn't elect Trump. Even if there was collusion, even if every hypothesis that has - that is at play in the…

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I really can't abide conspiracy theories, because I believe that everything in the world stems from idiocy and incompetence. That's certainly true…

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I think Putin's popularity was genuine when he first came to power. He was seen as a welcome relief from the Yeltsin…

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Putin really assumed that once Trump - who had such clear admiration for him - was elected, it would be convenient for…

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Trump very much wants to be liked by Putin and I think sincerely admires him. Putin doesn't know how to deal with…

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Putin was very careful to gradually sort of rotate people in and out of power, to make sure that he had competent…

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Of course, Putin may well have reasons for wanting Trump to be president - not least Trump's apparent skepticism toward NATO and…

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Both Trump and Putin use language primarily to communicate not facts or opinions but power: it's not what the words mean that…

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For the first stage of his dictatorship, Vladimir Putin was involved in destroying public space. On the first day he was in…

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I think that Russia was like a lot of other countries, a lot of empires, in being a tyranny up until the…

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I think that Putin's strategy has been throwing a lot of money, fairly haphazardly, at a lot of projects aimed at disrupting…

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There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as…

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There's not a whole lot of similarity between the two societies, Russian and American. There are similarities behind psychological forces. One thing…

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In the 1990s, there was a lot of reform, and there was a lot of forward movement on a lot of fronts…

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It seems that probably Putin's father maintained some connection to the secret police throughout his life. One sign of that is that…

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“Perestroika was an impossible idea on the face of it. The Party was setting out to employ its structures of command to…

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“At the time of the October Revolution, the Russian intellectual elite had been both a part and a partner to the European…

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Take the people facing charges in connection with the protests that occurred on the eve of Vladimir Putin's third-term inauguration, May 6,…

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When I was touring with my Vladimir Putin biography, which was published all over the world, people would ask me, How come…

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I have no doubt that there are Russian efforts to disturb the fabric of American democracy, but they're disruption efforts. The working…

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What has happened to protesters in the past was that, basically, the government in 2012 put an end to a series of…

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One of the things that I really value about Russian culture is that on the private level it allows for a huge…

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I don't have a lot of hope for Russia when Putin goes, because I think that the kind of damage that has…

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I do a very good impersonation of an American - I went to high school here - but I've spent most of…

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“[following the Kursk disaster].. "Putin appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. When King asked "What happened?", Putin shrugged, smiled - impishly, it…

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I wanted to show something that Americans don't usually think about when they think about Russia, which is the extreme stratification of…

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What Trump is not smart enough to even grasp is that the kind of popularity that Putin has can only be achieved…

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It's not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same…

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Many Americans have been looking for an explanation for Mr. Trump's apparent adoration of Mr. Putin. How can a powerful, wealthy American…

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I looked at Putin and was terrified from the very beginning. That makes me look very prescient because he actually turned out…

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“Half of the population is behind bars and the other half is guarding them,' Russians have said of their country since the…

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I think there was certainly contact between the Trump campaign and Russians, which is perfectly normal. All campaigns in the modern age…

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The thing about the Russian secret police and the Soviet secret police is that one never leaves the secret police. Once a…

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More by Masha Gessen

There's this American pretense, which is the pretense of the journalist with the view from nowhere - which has somehow morphed into the journalist…

Where incompetence is prized, it is ever-present.

Pussy Riot have certainly changed some people's assumptions about the role of political art and the relationship between the intelligentsia and the church. That's…

Trump, like Putin, has a demonstrably thin skin and short temper when it comes to being criticized by journalists.

You risk everything if you so much as join a legal protest demonstration in Russia. It raises the stakes.

Donald Trump creates word salads. And that is awful to language, because we try to parse out what he's saying and try to find…

It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do…

I think Donald Trump was brought to power by Americans. They voted for him.

In the 1990s, there was a lot of reform, and there was a lot of forward movement on a lot of fronts in Russia.…

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

I think that Putin's strategy has been throwing a lot of money, fairly haphazardly, at a lot of projects aimed at disrupting Western relations…

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…

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

I have no doubt that there are Russian efforts to disturb the fabric of American democracy, but they're disruption efforts. They're troublemaking efforts. They're…

For years I was the only publicly out gay person who was not a full-time gay activist: my position as a quasi-foreigner gave me…