![]() ![]() ![]() As she notes in this urgent chronicle, examining the Russian character through sociological instruments was frowned on, even banned, until the late 1960s, when Yuri Levada, who turns up at several points in this long narrative, began to look at how ordinary Russians thought about their society. Yet, as Gessen, who has written extensively on Putin, writes, that may flat out not be so. Are they the avatars of the good old days? With Vladimir Putin’s rise and increasingly absolutist rule, there may be something to the old saw that the Russian soul craves authoritarianism. ![]() A brilliant if somber look at modern Russia, a failed democracy, by prizewinning journalist Gessen ( The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, 2015, etc.).įirst there were the serfs, and then “Homo Sovieticus,” the gloomily obedient men, women, and children who waited in bread lines and slaved in mines and factories. ![]()
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