In the post-Soviet era, the most interesting work on the Stalinist period has been social history, far beyond the Kremlin walls - the study of what one of its leading practitioners, Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her book 'Everyday Stalinism,' called 'ordinary… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
One of the most influential of the post-Soviet books was the Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's 'Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization' (1995), a study of the steel city of Magnitogorsk, the U.S.S.R.'s answer to Pittsburgh, as it was constructed in… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“Honestly,” he says, “I judge writers on how they write queries. If you’re a good writer, you’re a good writer.” And if not, then… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“The sanatorium itself was charming, a group of cabins in the woods, a place for overworked urbanites to feel pleasantly melancholic. A slackertorium.” — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
When we started reading books to Raffi, I included some Russian ones. A friend had handed down a beautiful book of Daniil Kharms poems… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
In the post-Soviet era, the most interesting work on the Stalinist period has been social history, far beyond the Kremlin walls - the study… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
The imputation to Brodsky of Russian nationalist views is, of course, paradoxical and worth considering. — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
During two decades, on and off, reporting in Russia and the post-Soviet states - in the turbulent '90s, the wealthy but depressing aughts and,… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
While I was in Astana, a ballet master from St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre staged a performance of 'Giselle' in the opera hall. It was… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
Left Bank Astana was beautiful at night, each building, it seemed, with its own nighttime color scheme and the street lamps all going full… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
All literature has this moral strain, but in Russian literature, it's particularly sharp. — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“He was getting to be a certain age, he thought. It was the age when his never-to-be-written masterpieces had begun to outweigh the masterpieces… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
One of the best and most challenging books about Orwell is by the socialist literary critic Raymond Williams. As a critic - and, in… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
Baba Seva - Seva Efraimovna Gekhtman - was born in a small town in Ukraine in 1919. Her father was an accountant at a… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
The government, as a rule, discourages specialization: Military officers and diplomats are constantly transferred from one post to another, from one region to the… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore. — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
