For years I was the only publicly out gay person who was not a full-time gay activist: my position as a quasi-foreigner… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
LGBT people are really convenient: we're sort of the ultimate foreign agent in Russia. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
When your doctor and neighbours and child's schoolteachers know you are gay, there is no closet for you to hide in. — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
We have the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church talking about how gay marriage is a sign of the apocalypse, or Russian… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
Were there open gays and lesbians before the West started influencing Russia? No, there weren't. In fact, the most out person in… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
By the mid-noughties, I found that I was no longer the only openly gay person in every setting. At one point, a… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
There's this American pretense, which is the pretense of the journalist with the view from nowhere - which has somehow morphed into the journalist… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
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… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
Trump, like Putin, has a demonstrably thin skin and short temper when it comes to being criticized by journalists. — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
You risk everything if you so much as join a legal protest demonstration in Russia. It raises the stakes. — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
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… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
I think Donald Trump was brought to power by Americans. They voted for him. — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
In the 1990s, there was a lot of reform, and there was a lot of forward movement on a lot of fronts in Russia.… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
Poverty and scarcity are actually very good for totalitarian societies. They maintain that sense of mobilization that's essential for totalitarian societies. — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
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… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
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… — Masha Gessen Copy Share Image
