This new book about the future of Russia received a super-positive review in the Washington Post. The book is Masha Gessen’s “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.” The reviewer is Susan B. Glasser, who served as Moscow Bureau chief for the Washington Post.

She writes:

“Gessen is a Russian-born journalist and author who returned to Moscow to cover its brief democratic opening after the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to emigrate once again to the United States amid Putin’s crackdown. She has already written several chronicles of Putin and his era, including a best-selling biography, “The Man Without a Face.” Her scathing essays in the New York Review of Books warning of President Trump’s flirtation with Putin and his creeping authoritarianism have made her a public intellectual with a viral following.
But this is by far Gessen’s best book, a sweeping intellectual history of Russia over the past four decades, told through a Tolstoyan gallery of characters. It makes a convincing if depressing case that Homo Sovieticus, that unique species created a century ago with the Bolshevik Revolution, did not die out along with the Soviet Union.

Putin has now been in charge of Russia longer than anyone but Stalin. He is sure to win another six-year term, and he is only 47.

This next piece is a review of Masha Gessen’s bestseller about Putin. The book review was written in 2012, five years ago. It was published in the New York Review of Books. It was written by Anne Applebaum, a specialist on Russia who writes for the Washington Post.

It gives you a valuable perspective on the life and times of Vladimir Putin.

Both books are useful background in relation to the current investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. Did he do it? We will wait for the Mueller report. Was he capable of doing it? Of course.