Masha Gessen on Truth, Lies and Totalitarianism in Russia and the U.S.

good afternoon I'm will Hurst and I'm a very happy sponsor of the Bay Area Book Festival it's nice to be in a it's nice to be in the company of people who still read and write the first thing I'd like to do is introduce our interviewer today it's orbital shell who is currently the director of the Asia Society Center on us-china relations he's a senior fellow at the Annenberg School member the Council of foreign relation an endless list of prizes and scholarships author of 15 books I knew Orville when he was the Dean of the UC Graduate School of Journalism and I also felt that he was a member of a kind of secret society of people who actually wrote the talk of the town for The New Yorker and this mystery has never been adequately revealed it's also a Guggenheim Fellow remember the Overseas award of the Overseas Press Club hardwood Stanford Shorstein Prize in Asian journalism and our special guest today in this session which is truth lies and totalitarianism in Russia and the u.s. sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay is Masha Gessen masha is a Russian American journalist author herself of many books an upcoming book called the futurist history how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia and of course words will break cement the passing fashion of Riot she is herself a well known activist and an outspoken critic of both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in an extensive 2008 profile of addameer Putin for Vanity Fair she reported that the young Putin had been an aspiring thug and that the backward evolution of Russia had begun within days after his inauguration I am also a fan of her writing and I remember an interview she did with Samantha bee and one of the things that inspired me was that her feel for language and the role that language plays in oppression and for I won't create a spoiler but in this interview she said Donald Trump has an instinct for doing the kinds of violence to language that are familiar to me from speaking and writing in Russian he has a particular nose for taking words and phrases that deal with power relationships and turning them into their opposite you can find that anecdote but I won't go any further because it has a very nice twist at the end what else can I say she is the founder of the pink triangle campaign and has written extensively on LGBT rights and is sometimes described as Russia's leading LGBT rights activist she has also written for the New York Times The New Yorker The New York Review of Books The Washington Post Vanity Fair New States the New Republic Harper's please welcome to our stage Orville Schell and masha gessen well thanks will and thanks to all of you for coming and marshland thank you for coming to thank you join us today let me start by asking you if you were surprised that at this sort of point in history after this period when we thought the the end of history was the triumph of liberal democracy that we are sort of heading off into a axis of saga cracy which seems to be sort of a predominant world trend well I wouldn't include myself in the we who thought it was the end of history I was a it 1990 that frankly I wrote that essay but um I yeah I didn't I didn't expect that it was good then raveling was going to be quite as fast and quite as profound as I think we've seen in the last few years or make it more accurately I think I've I've developed an understanding and I and I actually recall when this happened to me three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea I realized that there were things that are not surprising but are still shocking so I think that's the state that I've been in for the last couple years at sort of the state of not being surprised but still being constantly shocked so you know if we if we look back at the period and this book that Masha has written a futurist history's not out yet but will be this fall I mean it's an amazing sort of tour of Russia since you know the the Stalin period sort of a mixture of really interesting history profiles of people and some of her own experiences no no no no there's no first person there none of my own but you're you you are present you mean you I feel you in this thing is what I mean I guess it's not a there's a lot of dialogue of other people but you are your sentiment is sort of very powerfully president I won't argue with that yeah yeah I think you're I think there was a period during the Gorbachev here in Russia and certainly when Don champion came to power in China when we had this sense that you know that things were turning and I wonder as you look back on that period in Russia what were you thinking is Gorbachev was was in your book chronicles all of this was making these startling changes in terms of glasnost and perestroika and were you thinking good we're off on a new historical sort of interlude or will you circumspect well that's a great question because I think that there I had a couple of sort of warring factions inside my brain I I came here when I was came to this country when I was 14 in 1981 with my parents and my parents position was very much that since they were convinced that the Soviet Union was going to last forever they were willing to sort of step off the precipice and and try to try something else because they weren't willing to live out their lives in the Soviet Union and really just a few years after we got here things began to change first first a succession of very very old secretaries of the Communist Party died and then Gorbachev came and immediately started saying weird things like we need perestroika which is restructuring we need glossiness which is openness and and public accountability and my parents and sort of their circle and in part I would them were convinced that that this was very much like the Khrushchev thaw that followed Stalinism that was basically an attempt on his part to shore up his own power within the party to make sure that he could rule the country for a long time and it wasn't going to cause any lasting change and part of the part of it I think was was actual experience of living in the Soviet Union and for my parents certainly the experience of illusion and then disillusion of the Khrushchev thaw which ended abruptly in in 1964 but I think part of it was also every emigrate desire to assert that they were right in making the decision to leave right so that was sort of that was one warring faction in my brain another warring faction in my brain was I was a young reporter and and I started going back and writing about the Soviet Union before that the Soviet Union collapsed and writing about some of some other places in Eastern Europe and that was incredibly exciting and it really felt like the change that was happening was profound that it was it was a tectonic shift and things were never going to be the same and that really the country would the Soviet sort of project was ending and and that's the narrative that ultimately took hold that in August 1991 after the failed hardline coup the Soviet Union finally disintegrated and a democratic Russia took root and part of what I'm trying to do with this book is to sort of go back and question whether that's that narrative is actually correct and whether whether it may not be useful to look at those years of of change as perhaps are very important but not Cardinal shifts in Soviet history and and certainly in Soviet society so I mean this is really a question that I find very interesting and very important for our current sort of era and that is to what degree is a revolution such as Russia experienced or China or North Korea or whatever sort of totalitarian states have a durability to what degree is that sort of worked into the genetic makeup of the culture of the body politics of it in fact it is almost impossible for them to sort of overcome it through something like but you know or Gorbachev or a dong Xiao ping that it's too deep and too durable it's interesting I mean that those are probably not the words I would choose to use because I don't think it's about durability I don't think it's about something that's become a part of the of the of the make up I think it's actually about destruction it's it's the destruction of the fabric of societies the destruction of trust is the destruction of language is the destruction of the very experience of shared reality and and so when you don't have any of those things how do you even begin to rebuild that is part of the legacy it seems to me that absolutely it is Italy yeah I think we're talking about the same thing and we're just Google Wang oh you're talking about sort of a presence time talking about an absence and I think those those those huge absences are wouldn't possibly make it impossible for countries to recover I mean they're post-soviet countries that I think have recovered to remarkable degree but they had a very different experience of totalitarianism they could you know I'm talking about the Eastern Bloc countries that became part of the Soviet empire or the outer Empire in in the wake of World War two and I think that one of the things that that have been hugely useful for them is to be able to other the experience of totalitarianism to sort of say that they were under occupation and they had a legacy that they could claim but preceded the occupation and so they can tell a story about the country that is based on on on perhaps and imagined but still in the memory of trust and and and cooperation and sort of social connections right all the things that that the Talat arianism destroys I also think that the fact that they were totality ran for half as long as the Soviet Union was is very very important I mean China is now running close to them in terms of the length of the experience of living under a one-party state when you look around the world today and you see that there's duterte in the Philippines there's there's Xi Jinping in China there's you know Viktor Orban and Hungary and you know the litany Putin and now we have air Diwan and Turkey and we have Donald Trump who's in a certain sense fits right into this historical trend how do you kind of explain that we've ended up that this in this kind of a situation where democracy seems to be increasingly fragile well I'm trying to write a book about that so I don't I don't quite have a you know five word answer to it yet but but I think that the premise that I'm that I'm working on right now in writing this new book is that there's actually I'm at militias starting the stories of roughly the same place we just did which is the thematic imagined end of history when this thus Tecate me between the totalitarian communist states and the Democratic West seem to disappear and and we know what happened or some of what happened to the to the post-soviet states but we haven't really tried to sort of construct a story about what happened to the West once it lost the the cautionary tale that that the totalitarian States always presented and I think one of the things that have been lost in the wet in the West is this awareness that democracy is not just something to be protected but also something that's never actually there right democracy is not a definable thing a definable state that a country achieves a country is becoming more democratic at any given point or less democratic and I think a lot of Western countries have been becoming a less democratic for many years this one certainly has and I think in that sense Trump is is a leap but it's a relief taken from out from a running start do you believe history has a direction I don't believe history that has a direction I and I generally believe things are a mess and and I and I I basically subscribed to the to the to the mess and it easy narrative of history I mean I think that that sort of the speaks of our time too doesn't it that it's really hard to believe in almost anything we're just constantly being thrown off balance so I talked a little bit about how you look at the sort of fraternal relation that Trump and Putin seem to have established let me besides just the personal affinity of thug on thug how do you explain it where do you think it's going to go oh that yeah so I think that that actually the best explanation for why Trump admires Putin so much is what was it was given by Chip Snyder and in the New York Review of Books not by me and and he said that and so this was last summer that's almost a year ago he said that Putin is the person that Trump plays on TV and I think that's exactly right right he is the ruthless thuggish dictator that the Trump plays on TV or the Trump post playing on TV now he's playing it's um you know in in in the were playing him in the White House so I think that and and and I think that Putin's political persona and Putin's government corresponds to Trump's basic ideas of what politics is he thinks that politics is an exercise in raw power when he talks about Putin and it's not just Putin I think he's talked about the North Korean and Chinese leaders and very much the same way you can do today and deter - yeah absolutely he talks about control and Xi Jinping he loves after having reviled him exactly but when he sees that expression of raw power and he sees about powering talks about control and he talks about serve off the scales popularity and he really does not and couldn't possibly have an understanding of where those things come from and that you don't have 86 percent popularity ratings in a situation where the free media and and political competition right I mean that's that's that sort of a degree of autocracy that that you measure when you measure when it when you come up with an 86 percent anything right so a bit like a People's Republic it's a dead giveaway case exactly so so I think I think I think that his admiration for Putin has a simple and sincere origin which is that nahi that's what he wants to be he wants to have raw power he wants to have control over the population and he wants to be supremely popular so now where where is this relationship going and this way the way you posed the question we can actually neatly skip over the everything else and just go directly from admiration to where this relation was going I mean I I'm on record as predicting that there will be the shortest hangman in history which I think turned out to be correct I think it you know lasted seconds and yet it seems the flirtation is not entirely abandoned I mean you have kiss lyac in the White House it's almost as if he's the matchmaker trying to relight the fire you know that that sort of thing never works right and then wonder yeah I really don't Masha I have to say I don't know what works anymore you're right right we don't know but but I think you know I mean I was just in Moscow actually listening to two Russian television which I always tried to do when I'm in a hotel room and and there's there's real grievant coming across the airwaves there's real real sense of betrayal like we thought that he was going to be to be good to us he was out he was going to to get rid of the sanctions and and none of this has happened so there's um I think that that kind of sentiment is only going to build and then it's not like there's a lot of popular sentiment in Russia Mosley's handed down by the Kremlin but I think the common has been disappointed in the way that this relationship has gone I mean do you think that Putin and the Kremlin have done a pretty good job at sort of bollocks inking up for us and also do you think there's soft power their propaganda efforts because it surprised you with its effectiveness or or not it's it's a difficult question because because it's impossible to measure right so your question sort of assumes that we know that their propaganda has been effective no but that they I mean they I would have thought on the face of it they wouldn't have a really a leg to stand on in whether its RT or in dating the American body politic and finding favor and I mean and yet they seem to have surprised the world in being more of a compelling sort of example of their cause than one might have thought yeah and then again I'm not quite comfortable confirming that because I don't know that we know that that's that's really what's going on right I mean there's this theory that that the Russia meddling in the election took the form of influencing American public opinion through RT and that theory seems to me to be full of holes but I think that certainly the American public opinion was hugely influenced by the New York Times another major media outlets picking up on the products of Russian hacking but that's not exactly the same thing as is goatees just a waste of money I think it's likely our to use just a waste of money and then from from any sort of measure that book can tell but but on that I had theirs and I think this is this is maybe what you're getting at and I and I think that it's very insightful to to talk about of the undercurrent of of a worldview that Trump and Putin and an increasing number of these sort of blunt populist share and and it's the worldview that the world is rotten that things are really very simple and plain to understand that that everything is for sale that everybody is corrupt that everything is is transactional that it to me there's been a huge shift in public discourse in in the West in the last few years in that direction because it used to be we would watch or those of us who you know like to watch that sort of thing or dude for for work would watch Russians Russian officials Russian businessmen Russian journalists or so-called Russian journalists talk to their Western counterparts whether in Russia or here and they would always complaint in the conversation when one of them would say oh come on just like stop pretending we know this is how the world works we know that everything is for sale why do you pretend that that's not so why do you pretend that your elections are more transparent and fair than our elections why do you pretend that your newspapers don't do the bidding of their owners and their biggest advertisers all the same basis we're all the same and so that you know three or four years ago that still sounded bizarre and you kind of have to say - no no no no no you've got this wrong that's not how the world works that's what's what's changed right I mean we see huge numbers of people in this country and other Western democracies buying that narrative wholesale you know it's interesting that I think whether it's in Russia or China whatever authoritarian country one may be in I often find that that if you don't have a transactional motive you know making money dealing in power you want something if you are for instance some idealistic NGO type they literally don't get you they can only imagine you're up to something and the paranoid sort of authoritarian personality imputes to you motives which you probably don't have just because in their world they can't imagine anybody it isn't in that sort of transactional world which I think maybe underlies some of the fundamental distrust of civil society and authoritarian countries now that's exactly right and you know one one Putin for example was faced with protests mass protests in 2011-2012 I think he sincerely couldn't make sense of them and his theory of them was that they were paid by the US the protesters were paid by the US State Department and by Hillary Clinton personally which is because he actually believes that that's one of the reasons he hates Hillary so much but now we have a president here who looks at protesters and immediately accuse the government of being paid professionals because he can't conceive of people entering politics or really engaging any activity for any other reason I mean this may be actually the most sort of telling change in the world that if people who go into politics for public service or to whatever in the just to make a difference as people say if that is something that is misunderstood or cannot be factored into the equation then we are in a world where democracy it seems to be is tremendously challenged I agree and and I think that we have to sort of really dig into what that means and what that what that necessitates and I think it certainly necessitates something that that even the Democratic Party in this country or perhaps especially the democratic country a party in this country has been reluctant to do right which is a language of values a language of ideals is a reassertion of those values that that many people have come to think of as quaint and and a little bit embarrassed phenomenal to the real world of transactions right right and but also but also if not if not transactions if they're not quite so cynical at least realist so here's a quite another question how what is it like to ask you do you think a country whether it's Russia China North Korea or whatever that doesn't deal in an honest fashion with its history can't process it in an honest way it manipulates that it distorts it buries it very common occurrences do you think it matters can a society go on and be successful with that kind of distorted view of the past well I mean I think all societies have distorted views of the past the head or board despite some are more destroyed than others absolutely and and I think that that's that that's that's trauma that a society carries that's that's a wound that cannot be healed unless it's unless it's addressed and I think that you know that what we were talking about earlier about some post-soviet countries that have actually been very successful in terms of mending themselves after the result Arianism for instance and my favorite example is Estonia which I'm convinced is one of the best places in the world but but it has this very very strong narrative of we are a good people who were under occupation and there were people who trust one another and we're under occupation and many terrible things happened to us and now we're rebuilding on the basis of trust how do you think Germany stole another coat I think Germany has done pretty well but Germany had some unfair advantages one was that it had it only had to tell attorneys in for 13 years and that had a very menacing from the obvious right but but there were that everybody remembered a pre totalitarian past it there was also something else that that short period of totalitarianism guaranteed which was that people that you could simplify them in history is always simplification right but you could simplify what had happened by talking about victims perpetrators and bystanders but in a country like the Soviet Union everyone was a victim and everyone is advised it was it was a perpetrator and no one was a bystander and so to try to tell a coherent and intelligible story about that is quite possibly impossible and how do you jump over that I mean I mean this is too true in China as well I may be it isn't just the victims it's the victimizers and each has an incredible challenge and is in some way trapped how does a society if the time comes to change deter how does it deal with that I don't know that it's possible I don't think we've ever seen a successful example of doing that and then if you can say that someone else did it to you do it to yourself if you did it to yourself and you have to say we did this to ourselves how do you go on but but also it's not just that how do you go on but how do you even start to say it most people are not sure extremely reluctant to claim any responsibility for the past and so what they end up doing is whitewashing the past and the current narrative is the dominant narrative is Stalin was a great leader who turned the Soviet Union into a great power who won second world the second world war and there were some excesses some people some people suffered and and for that reason there's also this incredible cult of World War two because as one of the people in that in this book says it's it shines it's light backwards and forwards it looking backwards it sort of justifies all the atrocities that preceded World War two because now you can recast them as having been perpetrated in the name of building a great army and it shines us life forward because it made the Soviet Union into a great power and so anything that happened any violations and you in executions and you in presidents that happened after World War two we're in the name of becoming a great power and so World War two has become the sacred cow of Russian history and it completely overshadows anything else that happened during the Soviet period and people like Memorial who seek to dig up the gulag the Stalin are erased well they've been deemed foreign agents and then they they're perceived as a hostile inner force I get that cheer Cheers what I bring though wasn't if you I want to call your attention here as a this is an interesting article and March here right March here so here's a lovely little offering called autocracy rules for survival that Masha has written I recommend it to you although it's not saying exactly the most elevating article tell us what you were trying to do here so there's actually a journalistic anecdote that goes with this piece which is that on election night I was on standby for the New York Times to write there were they were going to do reactions from around the world to the election of Hillary Clinton and and I was them and I live in New York but I was supposed to write a bit about the Russian reaction and so said some sitting there looking at the returns and I finally the oh and I started to around one o'clock in the morning I started getting panic messages from friends even a message that basically said what do we do now like you know I somebody who has had to emigrate not once but twice I'm an expert in in in in what he do now like how do you effectively fight this thing aside from running away and and by 1:30 I wrote a note to the editor on duty and the thing is that the New York Times actually didn't have a plan B right so I think like most of the people had gone home after putting together the Hillery package and there's somebody fairly junior who was on duty at the paper at 1:30 in the morning and I wrote saying I don't think I should be writing about the Russian reaction I think I should be writing on surviving autocracy lessons on surviving autocracy and he wrote back said well maybe we should wait for the final results it looks pretty final to me but if you like I could make a provisional and and he wrote back saying there and so I wrote this piece and I sent it to the near curry of books where it promptly crashed the website several times over and also it also killed my Smart Watch because there are so many notifications that my smart was actually overheated and I gotta this is highly gratifying very it was highly gratifying is it the target dollar the dark know I mean you basically what you're saying here and this is you know she's writing this before the Trump really got rolling she says however well-intentioned this talk assumes that Trump is prepared to find common ground this is people would say give him a chance and you know that's like he's our president and this talk assumes that Trump is prepared to find common ground with as many opponents respect the institutions of government and repudiate almost everything that he stood for during the campaign in short it is treating him as normal as a normal politician there has until now being little evidence that he can be one that was very oppression w I have to say well I would say was realistic you know I mean I did I've actually spent a lot a lot of time thinking about the the problem of imagination because I think that imagination is something that works and I thought a bit about it a lot in my Russia work both sort of the problem of rebuilding when you can't imagine a future is huge you'll see the problem of memory because you can't imagine the past but I think also sometimes people can't imagine the present because what's happening in the present is so awful that it defies the imagination and so we reach for things that have happened in the past and we basically substitute our own inability to imagine something for a kind of knowledge and I think that that was that's been happening a lot over the last year I remember having conversations with people in the spring of last year when it was clear that the Trump had the Republican nomination blocked up and and people would say but none of the Republicans aren't going to let him get the nominee they're going to have a brokered convention or something like that as well why and my friends would say well just I just can't imagine him becoming the nominee and I think that the same thing was happening right after the election right it was so unimaginable even though it had already happened that there were sort of there was a set of straws that people were grasping at one of which was he is going to be presidential he so there's going to be magical transformation we have no evidence that a magical transformation is possible not just of Donald Trump but of anybody great but somehow that was easier to imagine that than that this person was going to be President there's also if you recall this imagination that the electors were somehow going to step in and and and save the day which actually I mean I think would have been a terrible outcome I mean it would have been a real fundamental electoral crisis in this country but but but still right that's that's what people were reaching for instead of imagining the obvious which was that he had been elected and he would be president so I mean I think it's fair to say that in Russia you know like China and other autocratic countries he checks and balances such as they are have not worked very well how do you think they're working in our country now as we are confronting a similar kind of a fall to be honest - I think they're working a little better than I expected but but that just shows how pessimistic I was but but did this is the thing my imagination it was just my I mean I think I've spent my entire career thinking about this stuff right I mean my my first commercial book was about my two grandmother's in house a survives hit those awards balance fees and I've basically been on that role the entire time I I've spent more than a quarter century thinking about the worst moments of humanity and answers and their and their legacy and and so my imagination I I like to think of sort of catastrophic we trained and what good period you met do you see your life as having been to me when you look at your own life and emigrated twice coming to this country and now we have problems what what's the halcyon time that you look to for your fond memories or inspiration oh I've actually been really lucky I've you know I've been I was I was a part of I think one of the greatest social movements in the history of this country certainly the last great social movement that created social change which was the AIDS activist movement I was and I was lucky enough I was i edited gay magazines at the time so i mean it was right there I was I got to write about it and be in it at the same time it was an amazing way to start a career a minute I was a teenager when I first started doing that I got to cover the collapse of the Soviet Union which was an amazing exciting time and even though I think that at the time I like most journalists was caught up in this excitement and unaware of the institutions that survived but I still I think it was one of humanity's finest hours and then we saw people trying to not out what what a democracy could be and and people coming out in August 1991 to defend the hope of having democracy in Russia that was the high tide though the dream wasn't it anyway the 1989 war China Tiananmen Square Russia falls apart me exactly gave birth to Francis Fukuyama's fevered dream right and and I think you know I mean I can totally understand why why you would think that this was it this was this was the apogee of humanity development and I I mean I covered the wars in US v I which was not a terribly uplifting thing but but then I got to cover the militia anti-militarist revolution and Belgrad and then the protest movement in it in Russia and 2011-2012 so I think all in all I have many moments I can think back to and certainly many great people that I have encountered along the way who just are inspiring when you look back at Russia now what kind of sentiments the rise I mean how do you feel about your country of your your birth hopeless i I just I think it's course sir it's just layers and layers of tragedy and an awfulness do you see no I mean one of the things in China they're always talking about is a rejuvenation and this is a very dynastic notion do you hear any talk in Russia I mean besides sort of in the Putin language of rejuvenation and do you think there's any hope of what possible scenario could by which could Russia be reborn honestly I don't see a scenario for Russia itself I think that there it's possible that some of the I mean first of all I think that when there is regime change and eventually it will happen I don't think that the Russian Federation which is basically still serve a rump of empire I don't think it can stay in its current borders so I think it's going to be broken up I think there's a chance that some of the of the breakaway parts of this empire will be able to invent a story for themselves that will take them forward I mean this is this is really grasping at straws but but I think there's a slight chance of that other than that whatever remains of Russia I think has been too profoundly destroyed that said obviously I still have a lot of a lot of friends in Russia and I think that what what has happened for them in the last few years is that they have sort of gone from trying to work and envision a big future public future they've really all gone into doing small work good so like sort of that period in the 19th century in Russia where people went back to the countryside and to small deeds almost yeah this is this is the theory of small deeds and that's but but but they haven't gone back to the countryside but what they have done is somebody has started a small private orphanage for the kind of kids who are warehoused in Russia so kids would would would major what the major special needs who most of them were non-verbal and when they got to this place and and someone else has started a different kind of charity and someone runs a very sort of small-scale education project for grown-ups to try to make up for lacunae and in in in their understanding of the humanities and it's really the idea of changing people's lives were changing over one life at a time and you know it's it's it's it's also very inspiring and and there's successes on that small scale are amazing it's also in a way having admitted defeat I mean these are people who 5 10 years ago would have wanted to change the entire system of Russian orphanages and foster homes and adoptions and the whole thing right and they no longer do that they no longer live in the big world they carve out a small space in which they're still able to make a difference let me just see before we maybe go to questions from you all let me ask you one final question do you think the world is going to really suffer miss the American example as being some sort of a hopeful inspiration if we continue to sort of evolve on the path we're on presently I mean do you think that sort of the idea of American democracy even the somewhat hackneyed idea of the city on the hill has been extinguished and will matter to people around the world I guess of what depends on what we do right well yes I mean I mean wherever we are today where it seems to me we're in a state of some compromise and if you extend that line out I wonder what the effect will be in a country like Russia on China the other big players who have very different political systems and values well again I think that I right now what this country has done it's affirmed the worldview that rules Russia and I think we rules China you know that that view of the world is basically wrong right and that's you know that's a fascist worldview and if we don't succeed in beating that back in this country if we don't succeed not just an unseating Donald Trump but in as a society returning to this really you know amazing set of abstract ideals in which this country was founded then yeah in in in sort of in terms of the story that world you will have one ad when you look around the world you know Portugal head Salazar we had Franco in Spain Hitler in Germany Stalin and on and on Mao and China Mussolini and Italy we are really with exceptional possibly of Britain the only society that's dodged the bullet of of authoritarianism and even fascism do you think there is a sufficient sort of reservoir of resistance in this country to continue to avoid that fall so that's that's the question again see what kind of history I subscribed to history is a narrative where history is men specific merchants of America whether it has the innate inner strength to overcome such challenges so that's the question of American exceptionalism you know is there something about this country that that in that protects it inherently from that kind of threat and I don't think any country is protected inherently from that kind of threat right and if that protection is not active if this country is not actually developing in the direction of the coming more democratic it is susceptible you know to that blunt force and I think you know that's that's my catastrophic imagine that's my belief that when that thing appears on the horizon it's going to win that's why some of the things I said you've called prescient but but I just that that I think that that force is actually irresistible that force that that oversimplifies that promises to put all your fears to rest by returning to an imaginary past that's really difficult to be back especially in times of high societal anxiety which is what we've been living through for the last several years let's have some questions thoughts from you all I gather they're they're microphones roaming around let's start right here is there a mic close at hand and then we'll go to user right here and please introduce yourself keep your questions brief so we can get as many and as possible hi hi my name is Heather two things the first is that you mentioned when you were a young reporter you went around Russia I think and you saw examples of things that had improved a lot I'd be curious to know some of those examples and secondly I'm wondering what are the things that Russians the average man on the street points to about Putin that they love besides big world stuff like day to day things that he made better for them right so um I'm not sure what you're referring to when you ask about things that got better a Russian but let's let's logistic to one question per person so I'll just answer the second question so the average Russian and it's actually a great question because it gets to something very important so your average Russian will say that they that here she likes Putin because he's made the country great again and and they do not in fact point to things that have improved in their daily lives and that is very very important look at it like people who support Club absolutely and it's um and I write about that quite a bit in this in this book that's coming out in October because it in the Soviet post-soviet model it harkens back to Soviet doublethink right which worked in a very particular way by basically dividing people's minds into sort of a public consciousness and in a private consciousness and you could have completely contradictory sets of beliefs for your public self in your private self not you know not nothing that the public self is allowing so I'm just saying you know that's that's your self but but your self is fragmented and the public fragment is identifies with the state and draws a lot of strength from this identification from the state it is truly gratifying to identify with a great country and your private selfie at the very same time is convinced that the government is out to cheat you that you're always deltad that you always don't get enough there's amazing survey that I said there that when Russians were asked but whether they were they thought they made more money or less money than other people who do the same job two-thirds said that they make less money than other people who do the same job which is statistically impossible great up but but it goes to very deeply held belief but you're always always being you know you've been defrauded in some in some major way and so you can he'll have those two beliefs at the same time and people still do Putin is somebody that they identify with with their public selves and it's great and it gives them strength to identify with him and it doesn't mean that they think that the government has been good for them to them or that their lives are good I think it's a really interesting way to divide it and I think we're seeing that more and more in countries including our own around the world that the sort of bifurcation of identity but the strengths in the power of the country and not particularly liking the government or feeling it's very just or equitable okay sir thank you I'm after Nixon resigned we had a period of reform and so how can we bring about a glass notes and open criticism work today's its constructive and fair and then reform perestroika without getting into that you know false equivalencies and the world's rotten and as George Orwell said in his essays and about English exceptionalism half a loaf of bread is still half a loaf of bread and as Frank Zappa said be careful about tearing down the stage too much because behind it is nothing by brick wall and like a prison cell and as long as it's a stage we can still use it and so how do we criticize the country address its problems and get the reform that we need to move forward and also get him to resign Mike Dixon so are you talking about our country or Russia this country no that's a great question and I think that that we have to be really sort of contentious and intentional at all times intentional the way we use language in intentional preserving the things that actually form our shared reality that we want to protect right and so the kind of talking about this country as rotten and and it's it's institutions as fundamentally flawed is probably not a terribly useful thing in terms of criticism talking about specific institutions that need to be fundamentally reformed is a useful thing and using those were you know using specific words and acting meaningfully with others to bring about that change is what keeps us I think from from destroying the thing that we want to protect this is about the relationship between totalitarianism and religion Trump has very sort of weird and somehow paradoxical relationship with the religious right can you draw any parallels in his way of dealing with that and how Putin has co-opted religion in the rest um I'd actually know and I'll explain why I've been in in Russia the Russian Orthodox Church has always served at the pleasure of the state it's always been part of the Czar's mechanism of controlling the country then later weirdly are the bolsheviks mechanism of controlling the country and so Putin hasn't invented anything in this in this arena his absorbed the rhetoric and his worked very well with the church but basically it's sort of a right hand in the left hand that are attached to the same body and and that and they cooperate for the most part I don't think that they're any meaningful parallels with this country in that sense a very very interesting conversation I was wondering as a keen observer the American scene as well as the Russian thing there aren't other sources for the transactional culture that precisely Trump represents and it seems to be shared internationally but it's also peculiarly American and I would say that wouldn't it be the corporate entrepreneurial ethos of a mature late capitalist society and so and Trump is a capitalist folk hero of sorts after all and that would explain a lot Wow as to the sources of this is authoritarianism don't you think and also is transactional ethos by the way a transactional ethos it does not scandalize a lot of Americans they love the fact that everything is up for grabs everything can be in my opinion everything is negotiable that's one of the fascinating you know seductions of Donald Trump in the eyes of many but I would like to have your sense of what sources here in the United States might be pulsing this kind of transactional authoritarian ethos I think you're right it's um it's the sort of the American veneration of simple business like behavior but I also think there's a good foundation or bad foundation for it in politics on both sides of the aisle right this idea that we have to realist that values values based politics have basically been seeded by the Democratic Party to to the Republicans and and even sort of aspirational speech has for the last thirty years been on the decline and and much of what we've heard especially in fact from Democratic politicians is is it much more sophisticated but basically sort of transactional kind of language just say that amp the aspirational language has been taken over by the language of entrepreneurialism and innovation and disruption and so on and so forth which is why I think Trump should leave the problem will remain because that debriefers will be there and someone from Silicon Valley will probably step in to fulfill a similar role I agree with you and I think that that we need a lot more than than to get rid of krump we need to get rid of the conditions that made from possible and those are go very very deep hi I just want to make sure I understood did you seem to suggest there was a time in our history of this country when things were okay I think it's all relative isn't listening I think it is all relevant I think that there have been a different historical periods in this country and that there have been different vectors of development and I think that you know I certainly do not subscribe to this this idea that that's prevalent but clearly not in this audience which is really refreshing that the Trump just sort of accidentally or not accidentally but you know Russia put him here and and and and an American society was entirely unprepared for for him and did nothing to create him I also don't even subscribe to the idea that we're living now in expectation of some catastrophic event that Trump is going to use to to consolidate power I think that catastrophic event the the American Reichstag fire happened on September 11th 2001 right but at the same time I certainly think that there have been much better periods in this country's history than the one that we're living through now when I look at our history I think about slavery and Jim Crow and you know that wasn't that long ago I mean I was around in the 60s working civil rights I and that's still not working so I of course I I'm just saying that they're part of what goes on here is we forget all the horrible things that this country has done I think we can't forget that and yet finally I'm sure Martha you would agree there is some fundamental differences between Russian society and the body and system of politics in America which we also shouldn't forget yes there are fundamental differences and I mean I also I try to be very careful especially when I when I talk about you know Putin and Trump I try to be very careful to point out something very simple which is that I'm not you know having been in Putin expert doesn't actually make me a trauma expert they're very very different and the countries are very very different what covering Putin for twenty years has given me as a set of optics but and so I see certain things but we can all see but they really pop out at me because they're recognizable and so I can point to something and say look you know pay attention to this yeah which you this is what this article is about I highly recommend it it's good roadmap for where we're headed where it is in New York Review of Books when in a number 10th November 10 16 okay next hi I wanted to ask you what you think the impact of Russia interfering in our elections if you assume that that is there even though the investigation is incomplete but what do you speculate is the result or possible results of that so um I try to be really careful talking about this because I think that again the so the Russell story has served as a real crutch for for the imagination because it works it works to explain how we got Trump and it also works to give us hope for getting rid of Trump and I think most likely the existence of a conspiracy the possible existence of a conspiracy is actually still a very bad excuse for a conspiracy thinking right so one doesn't necessarily exclude the other I think that the investigation should proceed but I also think that most likely the investigation is going to produce first oil is going to last a really long time and it's going to produce a lot of sort of loose ends and you know connections that maybe weren't conclusive and and ultimately those are the dream that everybody has is that it's going to tell us that Donald Trump had an actual arrangement with Russia to help him win the election and that he followed through whatever arrangement they made well that would be really out of character for the whole Trump so to hold a thought consistently in his head for months and follow through on any promises that he made so I think it's you know it's not going to be the magic bullet and it's not going to be the magic explanation which doesn't mean that nothing happened we know that Russia has been trying to disrupt a number of elections in a number of Western countries for a number of years there's certainly very good evidence that the the hack of the Democratic National Committee or the two halves of the Democratic National Committee were carried out by agents connected to the RO two different Russian intelligence services and then it gets fuzzier right then the theory that's advanced by the intelligence agencies in the in the joint report that was released in December is that then Russia used that information that they got from from the hacks to influence American public opinion well you know the institutions that actually picked up that information after WikiLeaks released it and I'm convinced that Julian Assange doesn't have an arrangement with Mosca Julian Assange has an arrangement with himself to draw attention to himself and to be destructive and he if you haven't seen yet the film risk about Assange it's it's um it's very much worth seeing for that to sort of get a get a front row seat to observe his motivation and his view of himself in the world he is his own agent of destruction and so it makes perfect sense that he released the the products of the hacks when he did because he views himself as an agent of destruction and then we get into really tricky territory where you know the New York Times and The Washington Post pick up the information immediately without discussion because legally they're in the clear and there isn't even the ethical question of whether this is at the fruit of a poison tree isn't even asked right and so because there's the nation that would that we have is well you know it was it was out there we didn't put it there so if from - I can go on and on but - to bring this around there could actually be good outcomes of all of this for example we could finally have a conversation about sort of the media as an journalists as political actors as and not is it not not not as people who seem to have no personality no opinions and no position in society and take things because they're lying there and they're not going to get sued for publishing them so maybe maybe we'll luck out in that school I think we have time for one more question Lawson solet's okay a few more okay sure first of all thank you for your time Masha I do have a universe of responses to a number of the things you said tonight but I'll keep it short first I'd like to jump on board with a gentleman who said slavery and other things that we have but we don't have to look at far in our past 2005 with Katrina and the fact that racism today is systemic slavery did not go away it transmogrify to change into something else so there were never any halcyon days for the u.s. a second you refer to totalitarian states do totality reinstates invade other countries are do democritus democratic states invade other countries because Russia has not invaded a country under Vladimir Putin charlie yes Georgia and Ukraine are not countries first of all I'm also a writer I also have a book and I also do pretty extensive research first you have let's not to a question here okay are you finished Russia did not invade Georgia nor did it invade Ukraine and I okay let's have a comment on that I'm not going to dignify that with a comment okay all right I think she's exercised her prerogative so let's I think we'll i've been next question next question please and I think this should be the last question possibly it's one phenomenon I don't understand and I'm hoping you'll be able to enlighten me on it Russian emigre is left at Italian regime come to the United States go to Israel in both countries they vote for the most right-wing parties can you explain why I'm just totally baffled not all of them no but here I mean I one of the most mortifying moments after the election thing I was looking at the New York City's electoral map and seeing that it was the Russian emigre is who the the neighborhoods where Russian emigre live in New York City are the neighbourhoods with one for Trump and a couple of other neighborhoods as well but but all the neighborhoods with the with a high concentration of Russian immigrants and I think the simple answer is um you can take a person out of a totalitarian society and you can't take a totalitarian society out of a person I think also a more complicated answer tonight and I actually hope to be writing about this soon specifically with respect to Israel is that you know Emma Grey's are dislocated people who arrived traumatized and disconnected and the assumption that you can that societies in which these people arrive absorb them into a political system that responds to their needs is faulty right I mean they land alienated and alienation is one of the biggest threats to democracy and alienation is what leads people to vote for people like Donald Trump you may be up by some of Marcia's books I believe in the lobby she'll be out there to sign the more non Putin one on the Boston Marathon bombing and the third one probably all right yeah so please rally outside and join me in thanking much again [Applause] you

Channel: Journal of Alta California

Views: 13,922

Keywords: Masha Gessen, Orville Schell, bay area book festival, journal of alta california, altaonline

Id: EG0_EAETy9U

Length: 69min 8sec (4148 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017