The future is history : how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia / Masha Gessen.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [488]-506) and index.

Part one. Born in the USSR -- Born in 1984 -- Life, examined -- Privilege -- Homo sovieticus -- Part two. Revolution -- Swan Lake -- The execution of the White House -- Everyone wants to be a millionaire -- Part three. Unraveling -- Grief, arrested -- Old songs -- It's all over all over again -- Part four. Resurrection -- Life after death -- The orange menace -- All in the family -- Part five. Protest -- The future is history -- Budushchego net -- White ribbons -- Masha: May 6, 20112 -- Part six. Crackdown -- Seryozha: July 18, 2013 -- Lyosha: June 11, 2013 -- A nation divided -- Zhanna: February 27, 2015 -- Forever war.

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their ownas entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of todays terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.