The Russian-American author of The Future Is History explains the Putin-Trump spectrum of political control and social disillusionment
Your book looks at Russia through the perspectives of seven people, old and young. A phrase that comes up repeatedly is budushchevo net— “there is no future.” Why is that so important?
I started out trying to tell a story of Russia’s trauma. And one of the hallmarks of trauma is the loss of the ability to plan for the future. It’s really about the loss of control. This sense of having no control over your own life is very important to creating a totalitarian subject. People express that with the phrase budushchevo net.
The word totalitarian is usually reserved for repressive regimes like North Korea or Nazi Germany. Has Russia really reached that level of state control?
The regime that exists in Russia is not a totalitarian regime. It’s a mafia state. But society, which has been conditioned by so many years of totalitarianism, responds by creating totalitarian mechanisms, [like] when people start raiding bookstores to make sure there is de facto censorship.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 30,2017 من Time.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 30,2017 من Time.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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