Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen began contributing to The New Yorker in 2014 and was a staff writer from 2017 to 2024. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including “Surviving Autocracy” and “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017. They have written about Russia, Ukraine, autocracy, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among other subjects, for The New York Review of Books and the New York Times. On a parallel track, they have been a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics; famously, they were dismissed as the editor of the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug sveta for refusing to send a reporter to observe Putin hang-gliding with Siberian cranes. They are a distinguished professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College. They are the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the John Chancellor Award, the Hitchens Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, a Polk Award, and an Overseas Press Club Award. After more than twenty years as a journalist and editor in Moscow, Gessen has been living in New York since 2013.
What We Know About the Weaponization of Sexual Violence on October 7th
Rape is a shocking and sadly predictable feature of war. But the nature of the crime makes it difficult to document and, consequently, to prosecute.
How a Palestinian/Jewish Village in Israel Changed After October 7th
Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom was founded on a total belief in the power of dialogue. In the wake of Hamas’s attack and amid Israel’s war in Gaza, a “very loud silence” has fallen.
Aaron Bushnell’s Act of Political Despair
What does it mean for an American to self-immolate?
The Death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent
The opposition leader, who died in prison, had been persecuted for years by the Russian state. He remained defiant, and consistently funny, to the very end.
Tucker Carlson Promised an Unedited Putin. The Result Was Boring
In an interview that lasted more than two hours, the Russian President aired well-trod grievances and gave a lecture full of spurious history meant to justify his war in Ukraine.
The Limits of Accusing Israel of Genocide
Two recent court cases failed to stop the mass violence in Gaza, but they gave center stage to facts and historical interpretations that, in Western countries, at least, are often relegated to the margins.
Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness
With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched.
Lev Rubinstein, a Devoted and Defiant Lover of Language
The Russian poet and essayist was a founding member of the Moscow conceptualist movement, an “implausibly social” presence in Moscow, and a firm believer to the end in the possibility of living in Russia with dignity and decency.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust
How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.
How to Maintain Hope in an Age of Catastrophe
The psychoanalyst and author Robert Jay Lifton on what seventy years of studying both the victims and the perpetrators of horror has taught him about the human will to survive.
Inside the Israeli Crackdown on Speech
Since the October 7th attack, Palestinians and peace activists in Israel have increasingly been targeted by employers, universities, government authorities, and right-wing mobs.
The Tangled Grief of Israel’s Anti-Occupation Activists
Israelis who advocate for Palestinian rights are simultaneously absorbing two streams of traumatic news: the brutality and extent of Hamas’s attacks and the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
The Violent End of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Fight for Independence
In less than a day, indiscriminate shelling in the region killed hundreds, displaced tens of thousands, and wiped out a thirty-five-year battle for political autonomy.
The Ukrainians Forced to Flee to Russia
Some are brought against their will. Others are encouraged in subtler ways. But the over-all efforts seem aimed at the erasure of the Ukrainian people.
Prigozhin Showed Russians That They Might Have a Choice
This weekend, the country saw someone other than Putin act politically and—even more important—wield force.
Putin’s War Hits Close to Home
Russia has faced a series of recent attacks, but, in the absence of public space, military losses are personal tragedies, not collective experiences.
Art Is Now a Crime in Russia
The arrests of a director and a playwright in Moscow signal a new chapter in the Putin regime’s eradication of dissent.
How Putin Criminalized Journalism in Russia
The case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter being held in Moscow on espionage charges, is only the most recent example of the Kremlin’s crackdown on reporters.
An Architect’s Dream of Rebuilding a Battered City in Ukraine
Max Rozenfeld has spent much of the war imagining how the destruction of Kharkiv presents opportunities for reinventing its future.
A Ukrainian Philosopher’s Reluctant Departure from Kharkiv
Irina Zherebkina, who spent the first year of the war under bombardment in Kharkiv, still believes that peace must be imagined into being.
What We Know About the Weaponization of Sexual Violence on October 7th
Rape is a shocking and sadly predictable feature of war. But the nature of the crime makes it difficult to document and, consequently, to prosecute.
How a Palestinian/Jewish Village in Israel Changed After October 7th
Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom was founded on a total belief in the power of dialogue. In the wake of Hamas’s attack and amid Israel’s war in Gaza, a “very loud silence” has fallen.
Aaron Bushnell’s Act of Political Despair
What does it mean for an American to self-immolate?
The Death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent
The opposition leader, who died in prison, had been persecuted for years by the Russian state. He remained defiant, and consistently funny, to the very end.
Tucker Carlson Promised an Unedited Putin. The Result Was Boring
In an interview that lasted more than two hours, the Russian President aired well-trod grievances and gave a lecture full of spurious history meant to justify his war in Ukraine.
The Limits of Accusing Israel of Genocide
Two recent court cases failed to stop the mass violence in Gaza, but they gave center stage to facts and historical interpretations that, in Western countries, at least, are often relegated to the margins.
Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness
With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched.
Lev Rubinstein, a Devoted and Defiant Lover of Language
The Russian poet and essayist was a founding member of the Moscow conceptualist movement, an “implausibly social” presence in Moscow, and a firm believer to the end in the possibility of living in Russia with dignity and decency.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust
How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.
How to Maintain Hope in an Age of Catastrophe
The psychoanalyst and author Robert Jay Lifton on what seventy years of studying both the victims and the perpetrators of horror has taught him about the human will to survive.
Inside the Israeli Crackdown on Speech
Since the October 7th attack, Palestinians and peace activists in Israel have increasingly been targeted by employers, universities, government authorities, and right-wing mobs.
The Tangled Grief of Israel’s Anti-Occupation Activists
Israelis who advocate for Palestinian rights are simultaneously absorbing two streams of traumatic news: the brutality and extent of Hamas’s attacks and the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
The Violent End of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Fight for Independence
In less than a day, indiscriminate shelling in the region killed hundreds, displaced tens of thousands, and wiped out a thirty-five-year battle for political autonomy.
The Ukrainians Forced to Flee to Russia
Some are brought against their will. Others are encouraged in subtler ways. But the over-all efforts seem aimed at the erasure of the Ukrainian people.
Prigozhin Showed Russians That They Might Have a Choice
This weekend, the country saw someone other than Putin act politically and—even more important—wield force.
Putin’s War Hits Close to Home
Russia has faced a series of recent attacks, but, in the absence of public space, military losses are personal tragedies, not collective experiences.
Art Is Now a Crime in Russia
The arrests of a director and a playwright in Moscow signal a new chapter in the Putin regime’s eradication of dissent.
How Putin Criminalized Journalism in Russia
The case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter being held in Moscow on espionage charges, is only the most recent example of the Kremlin’s crackdown on reporters.
An Architect’s Dream of Rebuilding a Battered City in Ukraine
Max Rozenfeld has spent much of the war imagining how the destruction of Kharkiv presents opportunities for reinventing its future.
A Ukrainian Philosopher’s Reluctant Departure from Kharkiv
Irina Zherebkina, who spent the first year of the war under bombardment in Kharkiv, still believes that peace must be imagined into being.