skybridge

sethdmichaels.bsky.social · @sethdmichaels.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia 10/10

Highly recommended. A big, depressing history of Russia from the fall of the Soviet Union to the present day. Focuses on the events of the eras - late Soviet, Yeltsin, Putin - from the perspective of four people born in the last Soviet generation, reminiscent of The Warmth of Other Suns in its exploration of how the sweep of history is lived by individuals. Also goes deep into the theory and practice of totalitarian and authoritarian states and the means by which bad governance immiserates and controls people. A very Russian-centric view, as it should be, by a Russian-American journalist who has made it her life’s work to understand and explain Russia to itself and the world. There are a lot of things about Putinesque governance that are not just grim but ~weird~ - imagine if QAnon were taken as fact by like 60% of American politicians. It really lays out the struggles of Russia’s political climate, its implications for Russians, and its implications for the broader Russian-adjacent world as a nearly intractable problem; the parallels in the US and the implications for the wider world are left as an exercise for the reader. It’s long but it reads fast; always interesting to see events I lived through and remember set out as history in a longer context. I’ll be thinking about this one a lot for a long time.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 14:46 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere