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Masha Gessen
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Masha Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at Amherst College and is the author of several books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen’s other books include The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy. She was previously an editor at the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug Sveta, from which she was dismissed for refusing to cover an event involving Russian president Vladimir Putin hang-gliding. A New America Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, Gessen has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship.
Photo credit: Tanya Sazansky
Previously
![The Promise of Parallel Polis](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/null5cb63c7c-260c-4e15-8aed-020814efeff2/48127254236_1f0d6024ed_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=225&q=80&rect=0%2C329%2C4000%2C2250&w=400)
Demagogues promise a return to an imaginary past. The opposite of demagogues — politicians — focus on visions of a glorious future. The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen, author of Th...