Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen began contributing to The New Yorker in 2014 and became a staff writer in 2017. Gessen is the author of ten books, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017, and “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.” Gessen has written about Russia, autocracy, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among others, for The New York Review of Books and the New York Times. On a parallel track, Gessen has been a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics; famously, Gessen was dismissed as editor of the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug Sveta for refusing to send a reporter to observe Putin hang-gliding with the Siberian cranes. Gessen is a visiting professor at Amherst College and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the Hitchens Prize, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary. Gessen is currently a New America National Fellow. After more than twenty years as a journalist and editor in Moscow, Gessen has been living in New York since 2013.
All Work
- Our Columnists
“Jojo Rabbit” Captures the Horror and Absurdity of Our Trumpian Moment
The movie can be read as a condescending portrayal of a misguided and misinformed Trump supporter—or as an account of the profound and willful idiocy that underlies political tragedy.
January 6, 2020
- Our Columnists
The Real Purpose of Trump’s Executive Order on Anti-Semitism
The President’s new order will not protect anyone against anti-Semitism, and it’s not intended to. Its sole aim is to quash the defense—and even the discussion—of Palestinian rights.
December 12, 2019
- Our Columnists
A Powerful Statement of Resistance from a College Student on Trial in Moscow
Yegor Zhukov’s message about responsibility and love shows what political dissent can be and seems to describe American reality as accurately as the Russian one.
December 7, 2019
- Our Columnists
Zuzana Caputova, the President of Slovakia, Voices Her Country’s Hopes and Frustrations
The new President has used her extraordinary pulpit, in her small country and on the continent, to demand transparency and justice and to create hope.
December 5, 2019
- Our Columnists
Conan, the Gender-Fluid Hero Dog
Like most people, Donald Trump thinks that all dogs—especially big dogs that look ferocious enough to threaten journalists—are male.
November 27, 2019
- Our Columnists
The Immigrant Witnesses of the Impeachment Hearings
Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, and Marie Yovanovitch showed that no one takes the promise of this country as seriously as immigrants do.
November 24, 2019
- Our Columnists
What “Corruption” Means in the Impeachment Hearings
When Donald Trump and his defenders assert that his quid pro quo was motivated by concern about corruption in Ukraine, they undermine the true definition of the word.
November 16, 2019
- Our Columnists
The Two Irreconcilable Realities of the Impeachment Hearings
In one reality, political power is governed by values, norms, history, procedure, and law. In the other, political power aims to be absolute—its limit is what the President can get away with.
November 14, 2019
- Our Columnists
The Homophobic Activist Who Won an Audience with Two Supreme Court Justices
Brian Brown, the head of the National Organization for Marriage, has said that L.G.B.T. people should not exist.
November 8, 2019
- Our Columnists
The Terrorization of Katie Hill
Public humiliation, unevenly applied standards, and wrenching choices are consequences of being accused of sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era. But terror is reserved for the women.
November 5, 2019
