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The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Book by Masha Gessen · 8 quotes · Totalitarianism, Fascism, Trumpism

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The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia Quotes

“Other terms used to describe the Putin regime were 'kleptocracy' and 'crony capitalism'---variations on Navalny's theme of the "Party of the Crooks and Thieves." A Hungarian sociologist named Balint Magyar rejected these terms because, he stressed, both 'kleptocracy' and 'crony capitalism' implied a sort of voluntary association---as though one could partake in the crony system or choose not to, and proceed with one's business autonomously, if less profitably. The fate of Khodorkovsky and the exiled oligarchs, as well as of untold thousands of jailed and bankrupted entrepreneurs, demonstrated that this was a fallacy.”

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“Homo Sovieticus was caught in an infinite spiral of lies: pretending to be, pretending to have, pretending to believe, and pretending not to. The fakery concerned the most basic of facts and the most fundamental of values, and what lay at the bottom of the spiral was an absence: 'even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.' The system destroyed the individual and the fabric of society: nothing was possible in the absence of everything, resulting, wrote [Yuri] Levada, in 'the falling standards of education, culture, morality, in the degradation of all of society.”

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“It was the oldest trick in the book - a constant state of low-level dread made people easy to control, because it robbed them of the sense that they could control anything themselves. This was not the sort of anxiety that moved people to action and accomplishment. This was the sort of anxiety that exceeded human capacity. ... You can no longer sit still or reason. You regress, and after a while the only thing you can do is scream, like a helpless terrified baby. you need an adult, a figure of authority. Almost anyone willing to take charge will do. And then, if that someone wants to remain in charge, he will have to make sure that you continue to feel helpless. The whole country felt helpless. You could see it if you turned on the television, which Arutyunyan rarely did. Everyone on television was screaming all the time.”

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“[Hannah] Arendt pointed out that both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes conducted periodic purges or crackdowns, which she called 'an instrument of permanent instability.' Constant flux was necessary for the system's survival: 'The totalitarian ruler must, at any price, prevent normalization from reaching the point where a new way of life could develop - one which might, after a time, lose its bastard qualities and take its place among the widely differing and profoundly contrasting ways of life of the nations of the earth.' Indeed, she wrote, 'The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”

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“[Erich] Fromm observed no logic whatsoever in the ideology [of fascism]: 'Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism.' What Nazi ideology and practice did have, according to Fromm, was ritual that satisfied the audience's masochistic craving: 'They are told again and again: the individual is nothing and does not count. The individual should accept this personal insignificance, dissolve himself in a higher power, and then feel proud in participating in the strength and glory of this higher power.' And for the sadistic side of the authoritarian character, the ideology offered 'a feeling of superiority over the rest of mankind' that, Fromm wrote, was able to 'compensate them - for a time a least - for the fact that their lives had been impoverished, economically and culturally.”

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“What options did this frightening country offer its intolerably anxious citizens? They could curl up into total passivity, or they could join a whole that was greater than they were. If any possession could be summarily taken away, no one felt any longer like anything was truly their own. But they could rejoice alongside other citizens that Crimea was 'theirs.' They could fully subscribe to the paranoid worldview in which everyone, led by the United States, was out to weaken and destroy Russia. Paranoia offered a measure of comfort: at least it placed the source of overwhelming anxiety securely outside the person and even the country. It was a great relief to belong, and to entrust authority to someone stronger. The only thing was, belonging itself required vigilance. One had to pay attention: one day Ukraine was where the important war was being fought, the next day it was Syria. In the paranoid worldview, the source of danger was a constantly moving target. One could belong, but one could never feel in control.”

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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 make the country, and itself, less command-driven. A system whose main afflictions were stagnation and inflexibility was setting out to change itself. Worst and probably intractable was the fact that people who had spent their lives securing power and individual leverage were expected to devise change that would dismantle the hierarchy of levers and might dislodge them. The system resisted change instinctively...”

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