Book Title:The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia ISBN-13:978-1783784004 Author:Masha Gessen Publisher:Granta Guideline Price:£20.00Masha Gessen is a distinguished and prolific writer, journalist and activist. We learn what it was like to be a psychologist whose interest in Freud was frustrated by the Soviet regime and who had to struggle to master psychoanalysis in the 1990s. She suggests the Soviet regime “robbed people not only of their ability to live freely but also of the ability to understand fully what had been taken from them, and how”. Ideology – as a set of consistent beliefs – was really not so important to the Soviet regime, she believes. Homo sovieticus, who adapted to and survived Soviet totalitarianism, rather than disappearing after 1991, has endured and this has enabled the “old system” to be “reconstituted in new guise”.

Source: The Irish Times January 20, 2018 06:00 UTC