Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen Debate Russian and American Politics

Summary

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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen Debate Russian and American Politics
Date: April 15, 2019
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guests: Masha Gessen & Keith Gessen
Context: Live conversation at the 2018 New Yorker Festival

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Overview

In this insightful and candid conversation, siblings and celebrated writers Masha Gessen (staff writer, The New Yorker) and Keith Gessen (journalist, novelist, and Columbia journalism professor) offer a deeply personal and intellectual exploration of Russian-American relationships—both on the geopolitical stage and within their émigré family. Touching on immigration, historical narratives, identity, the post-Soviet experience, and the shifting perceptions of Russia in the US, the Gessens interrogate both American and Russian politics with characteristic clarity, skepticism, and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Transnational Lives, Family Immigration, and Identity

• Masha’s Dual Life:
  • Masha reflects on the experience of emigrating from the USSR, living in the US, returning to post-Soviet Russia, and then resettling in America.
  • She jokes about the emotional relief:

    “Nobody liked him here. And that put him at ease...It's really lovely to just not have that on a daily basis. Like, I hardly get any death threats. It's lovely.”
    (Masha, 03:49–04:35)

• Family Sacrifice and Motivation:
  • Keith and Masha discuss their parents’ courageous choice to relocate, particularly to avoid explicit anti-Semitic discrimination in Soviet universities.

    “I've thought about what kind of courage it would have taken to just step into the abyss.”
    (Masha, 05:22)

  • Their father’s positive framing of immigration as a “great adventure.”
    (Masha, 06:23)

2. Perception of Russia in the United States

• Evolving Narratives:
  • Masha notes how the American perception of Russia shifted dramatically over her five years back in the US; Russia went from post–Cold War irrelevancy to being a central, almost demonic player in US politics.
    (Masha, 06:45–07:04)
• Role of the “Putin Expert”:
  • Masha recounts the irony of being labeled both a “Putin shill” and a “Putin critic” online, highlighting the polarized and conspiratorial thinking prevalent in current US discourse.

    “I've been called a... paid Putin propagandist.”
    (Masha, 07:24)

3. Journalistic Influence and Responsibility

• Unintended Impact:
  • Masha and Keith dissect the unpredictable influence of journalism and authored narratives on public opinion and imagination. Masha is ambivalent about her impact on Putin-related discourse in America.

    “It is so impossible to predict how much influence what you write will have...”
    (Masha, 08:34)

• Dichotomy of Blame in US-Russia Relations:
  • Discussing Keith’s NYT Magazine article on “Russia hands,” they identify two camps: those who blame Russia for all diplomatic wrongs, and those who blame American policy.

    “That almost perfectly describes the stories that I have been writing versus the stories that you’ve been writing.”
    (Masha, 09:58)

4. Structural Forces and Policy—NATO, The ‘Deep State,’ and Obama’s Dilemma

• Institutional Momentum vs. Presidential Will:
  • Keith explains how US presidents come and go, but policy is often guided by a small, consistent cadre of national security bureaucrats, especially regarding NATO expansion.

    “Presidents come and go...but there is this kind of small core that moves between the State Department and the National Security Council.”
    (Keith, 11:17)

  • They debate whether NATO expansion was a preemptive defense or a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    (Keith & Masha, 12:47–13:01)

5. Fiction as Political Critique—Keith's “A Terrible Country”

• On Writing and Soviet Legacies:
  • Keith describes the evolution of his novel from a failed academic exercise into a story that centers on the grandmother’s experience and the realities of post-Soviet collapse.

    “Her life needs to make the central argument about what happened after the Soviet Union fell apart.”
    (Keith, 14:04–14:05)

  • Masha praises the finished work:

    “I read it in like one night instead of sleeping. ...No, but it's a really great book.”
    (Masha, 15:15)

6. Surviving Autocracy—Rules for the Trump Era

• On Predicting Autocratic Moves:

  • Masha revisits her “Rules for Autocracy,” acknowledging the difficulty of accurate political forecasting while underscoring the wisdom in her central rule:

    “Believe the autocrat. When he says he’s gonna do something nasty, chances are he will.”
    (Keith quoting Masha, 15:50; Masha, 16:28)

  • She recounts her emotional state post-2016 election and the temptation/dangers of making predictions:

    “It means that journalists should never make predictions is what it means.”
    (Masha, 16:28)

  • Reporting on Putin, she found:

    “He said exactly what he was planning to do. But people both in Russia and in this country had ideas about what he represented that had nothing to do with what he was putting forward.”
    (Masha, 17:53–18:16)

• American Institutions and Their Resilience

  • Keith raises the question of institutional failure vs. resilience.
  • Masha asserts:

    “I don't think [the institutions have] held up better than I expected. And I think the damage he's been able to do has been profound.”
    (Masha, 18:27)

  • The Supreme Court, especially the Kavanaugh hearing, is emblematic of this institutional vulnerability.
    (Masha, 18:27–19:05)
  • Masha:

    “Trump didn’t come out from outer space. He did not actually come from Russia. He came from here.”
    (Masha, 19:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Keith on Sibling Shadows:

  “She is the person in whose shadow I dwell, but in fact, it is more like she is the sunlight in whose rays I grow.”
  (Keith, 02:44)

• Masha on Emigration:

  “I've thought about what kind of courage it would have taken to just step into the abyss.”
  (Masha, 05:22)

• Keith on Policy-Makers:

  “Presidents come and go...but there is this kind of small core that moves between the State Department and the National Security Council.”
  (Keith, 11:17)

• Masha on Autocrats:

  “Believe the autocrat. When he says he’s gonna do something nasty, chances are he will.”
  (Keith quoting Masha, 15:50)

• Masha on Institutions:

  “I don't think [the institutions have] held up better than I expected. And I think the damage he's been able to do has been profound and has perhaps even been more profound than I thought in the first two years.”
  (Masha, 18:27)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & Personal Backgrounds (01:16–04:35)
• Discussing Parents’ Immigration & its Significance (04:36–06:23)
• Russia’s Perception in America & Online Polarization (06:45–08:29)
• Journalistic Responsibility & Shaping Narratives (08:34–10:10)
• Blame in US-Russia Relations; American vs. Russian Agency (10:10–13:01)
• Keith’s Novel & Changing Narrative Approach (13:01–15:15)
• Masha’s “Rules for Autocracy” & Journalistic Caution (15:50–16:28)
• Institutions in the Trump Era & The Supreme Court (18:16–19:21)
• Closing Reflections (19:21–19:30)

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation balances intellectual rigor and personal warmth, with frequent dry humor and frank self-reflection. Both siblings trade insights from their professional and family lives, modeling civil debate about issues that often provoke heated arguments elsewhere.

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Useful For

• Listeners interested in the intersections of Russian and American politics, journalism, and émigré identity
• Anyone seeking thoughtful, nuanced takes on US-Russia relations beyond daily headlines
• Readers of both Masha and Keith Gessen’s work looking for meta-commentary on their writing and public reception

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This episode stands out for its blend of memoir, debate, and analysis—delivered with candor, skepticism, and literary sharpness.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, a conversation from the 2018 New Yorker Festival, Masha Gessen sits down with her brother, the journalist and novelist Keith Gessen, to discuss the relations the United States and Russia where both Gessens were born.

[C]

Masha Gessen is one of our keenest observers of Russia and Russian politics. She grew up in the Soviet Union in its latter days, emigrated with her family to the US and then returned to Russia as a reporter. So she's got a unique perspective on the US Russia relationship. And all through the Mueller investigation, she warned people not to expect some kind of magical revelation or smoking gun of collusion between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. In 2018, she sat down at the New Yorker Festival with a guest she knows pretty well, her younger brother Keith Gessen.

[B]

So this is a completely self service panel. We're going to talk about ourselves, interview each other, introduce ourselves. So this is my brother Keith.

[C]

Keith Gessen is a founder of the magazine n 1 and he teaches journalism at Columbia University. He's written two novels, most recently A terrible country, which came out last year.

[D]

Okay. This is my sister Masha. She is the person in whose shadow I dwell, but in fact, it is more like she is the sunlight.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

In whose rays I grow. Oh, okay. So I'm very happy to welcome to our conversation. Yes. I will ask the first few questions, if that's okay.

[B]

That is fine.

[D]

So in late 2013, because of various unpleasant developments in Russia, you moved to Moscow. I mean, you moved from Moscow to New York after being away for 20 years. You've always worked kind of in both countries, but when you went back to Russia, you became a Russian language journalist working for Russian publications. You were publishing books and articles in the US but your kind of day job was as a Russian language journalist. And now you've moved back to the States and become primarily an English language journalist. So what has that been like?

[B]

Well, it's actually, it's been lovely because there's, you know, there's a line in your most recent book that is absolutely brilliant. You describe a character who in some ways, bears a certain resemblance to me. You're observing. The narrator is observing this character walking around Moscow and says, nobody liked him here. And that put him at ease. I think the experience of not being liked by anybody, it might be sort of character building, but it's really lovely to just not have that on a daily basis. Like, I hardly get any death threats. It's lovely.

[D]

Do you want to talk about our.

[B]

Parents right now, right here?

[D]

Sure. When I think about our immigration, our parents were in their mid to late 30s, and I grew up thinking, well, you know, basically their lives are over. Right. And so the only possible reason they could have immigrated was for us. And I kind of felt like you had mixed feelings about it, about our immigration, you know, and you kind of left home. So I was like, well, it was just me. They did it for me, so I better do good.

[B]

You did well.

[D]

Thank you. So from your perspective, is that. What do you think?

[B]

I think that for them, it was very important not to see us go through the experience of applying to university and experiencing what they did, which was just really explicit discrimination against Jews. It's one thing to know about injustice and unfairness, and it's another thing to come face to face of it and have it be completely sort of unabashed. I think for both of them, it was a formative thing, and so they didn't want to see us go through that. But mostly I think they thought they were doing it for themselves. And, you know, they were like, in their mid-30s. They had their entire lives ahead of them, but they really, I mean, I've thought about it a lot. I've thought about what kind of courage it would have taken to just step into the abyss. I mean, they knew nothing about this. Right. They read a few letters from people who had emigrated, and so they stepped into the abyss. But our dad, our mom died a long time ago, but our dad always responds by saying, we thought of it as a great adventure.

[D]

Do you want to talk about poetry, politics a little bit?

[B]

Sure.

[D]

Yeah. Okay. What, you didn't like hearing about our parents? I found that very therapeutic. So thank you. Has being here and writing about Russia changed your perspective in terms of what Americans need to know and need to hear?

[B]

Well, that's a great question. I mean, I think that the perception of Russia has really gone through some very strange permutations in the lastI mean, I've been here for just under five years, and it's been a very strange five years for, I think, how Russia is perceived in this country.

[D]

You found yourself in the somewhat curious position of having been a person who was writing about Putin and kind of warning about Putin for a long time, and now you're in the position of saying, hey, you know, relax. Sometimes I go on Twitter, I see people calling you up, paid propagandist for Putin.

[B]

I know, which is amazing. I've been called a Russia Putin shill. Yeah. Paid Putin propagandist. There's an online community of anti Trump Russian immigrants who. Yeah, they had a long thread going about how I was, whether I was intimidated or paid into what they see as supporting Putin.

[D]

Yeah. And they say that because you have been skeptical all along, first about the evidence, but then about the significance of the Russian interference in the election.

[B]

Right. In a way, I was one of the originators of that narrative when I wrote a book about Putin. And now I find myself in the very strange position of saying, come on, he's not that kind of monster. He's a different kind of monster, but not the kind of monster who's masterminded the takeover of the entire Western world. He doesn't have the mind for that kind of masterminding, among other things.

[D]

Do you feel partly responsible for this narrative?

[B]

What an interesting question. Yeah, a bit. But the problem with writing, with journalism or any kind of writing, it is so impossible to predict how much influence what you write will have and what kind of influence it will have and what sorts of anxieties and imaginaries it will tap into. I can acknowledge sort of contributing to that narrative. But I don't think that I can take too much responsibility for it. And I also don't want to overestimate the number of people who buy thick nonfiction books and actually read them. But you wrote this fascinating article for the New York Times Magazine earlier this year on so called Russia hands, and you posit a kind of dichotomy in that article that some people basically think that everything that has gone wrong in the Russian American relationship over the last 25 years, which is basically everything and consistently regardless of who was in charge, was attributable to Russia and its intransigence and its own trajectory. And then there are those who think that it was bad American policy and American failure to move past the Cold War narrative. And I think that that's actually, that almost perfectly describes the stories that I have been writing versus the stories that you've been writing.

[D]

You mean I am more likely to blame the U.S. yeah, that's my strong position.

[B]

Do you ever worry that that actually overestimates American agency and it's a kind of backhanded imperialist position?

[D]

That's an interesting question. I mean, yes and no. Yes. I mean, I think the article, you know, kind of traced American policy toward Russia in the post Cold War era through the sort of people who were inside the government, in the State Department, the National Security Council, who were kind of running Russia policy. And the article began because I had watched Obama seemed to really want to de escalate tensions with Russia and really de. Emphasize Russia in general, which struck me as objectively correct. Right. Russia is a troubled country that is declining, unlike its neighbor to the east, China, which is not declining. And that was the kind of Obama argument. Right. For shifting our focus to. To the east. And yet under Obama, you get the Ukraine crisis and eventually the hacking of the Democrats. And I was like, well, how, you know, why did that happen? Here you had a president who had kind of made his preferences pretty clear. Is there a deep state. Right. Which, you know, and when I started working on this had not been popularized by the right, at least I had not come across it. And I mean, the partial answer is yes. Presidents come and go, policymaker. You know, the people who they appoint come and go, but there is this kind of small core that moves between the State Department and the National Security Council. You know, and one of the kind of really surprising things to me about them was just how strong their views were. And you talk to them and they're quite convincing. For example, some of these people were in the Kind of center of debates over NATO and whether it should be expanded. And their position was we have this historic opportunity to push the sort of zone of security, as they called it. But other times they would call it the free world. Right. Or the west closer to the borders of Russia. Right. Because eventually Russia will come back and threaten those neighbors. And you could say, well, they've been proved correct.

[B]

I was just going to ask.

[D]

Yes. Or you can say this was a self fulfilling prophecy. And I don't know if the US had had a very different policy, whether we would have had a totally different result. I don't know.

[B]

Let's shift gears. So you wrote this book and I know that the process of writing that book was quite interesting and lengthy. Right. You set out to write something fairly different. Can you talk about that?

[D]

Sure. So it's basically a kind of a story about a guy who go. Who is actually a loser and goes to Moscow to take care of his grandmother at the request of his swashbuckling, entrepreneurial older brother. Who's not based on Masha.

[B]

No.

[D]

He has this fantasy that she's going to tell him stories about socialism and this will. Then he'll write these stories down and then it'll help him get an academic job. And then he shows up there and she can't remember who he is, much less a detailed narrative about Stalinist Russia. Yeah. And you know, and then I finished this draft and I kind of read it and it was horrible. And I cut all that stuff out.

[B]

Why was it horrible?

[D]

It was just boring. It was just really, really boring. What I realized, you know, a few years into the process was that actually the grandmother needs to be a kind of central figure. Not just as a kind of domestic background, but her life needs to make the central argument about what happened after the Soviet Union fell apart. And as you know, I changed some details. But it did strike me that our own grandmother's life, you know, she hated the Soviet Union and she was delighted when the Soviet Union fell apart. And then she lost her life savings. The town in which she lived fell apart. The where her husband worked fell apart. She lost her sense of self in the world, I think. I mean, it struck me that that story made a pretty good case for the post Soviet transition being not so great. So once I figured that out and kind of made the grandmother a more central character, the book became a lot better.

[B]

It is definitely no longer boring. Yeah, I read it in like one night instead of sleeping. And there were all sorts of reasons for me not to want to Read it at all or never mind in one night. No, but it's a really great book. Are you thinking of writing a nonfiction book?

[D]

I thought we weren't gonna. Yes, I am. Definitely.

[B]

Wait, I thought you were. We don't have to talk about it.

[D]

We don't have to talk about it.

[B]

We can talk about our books.

[D]

Yes, I am. Yes, I'm working on it.

[B]

What's the book?

[D]

I'm working on that.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[D]

You wrote a piece called Rules for Autocracy.

[B]

I did.

[D]

And it was written directly after the election. Right.

[B]

So.

[D]

Very much in the heat of the moment, But I wanted to revisit that and see how much of that you still think holds and where you were wrong and right. So the first rule for surviving autocracy is believe the autocrat. When he says he's gonna do something nasty, chances are he will. So one thing that you said that might lead to, you know, when they say lock her up, they're gonna lock her up. That hasn't happened yet.

[B]

Hasn't happened.

[D]

What do you think that means?

[B]

It means that journalists should never make predictions is what it means. And I think that, you know, the way that that piece happened was that I'd, like probably many people in this room, I'd been to a disastrous election night party and kind of crawled away without saying goodbye. And when I was on my way home, biking from Queens, I started getting phone calls and emails from people saying, what do we do now? Like, well, how should I know? I had to flee my country. Obviously, I don't have the answers, but it's a long bike ride. So as I was biking, I was thinking that there are actually things that I learned from living in a country that was what democracy had. Had. Was dismantling itself. Right. And was creating an autocracy. And I think that there are things that I learned about how you survive mentally and spiritually in that. But, you know, I think that the rule, believe the autocrat is I completely stand by it. And what I was trying to get across was something that I had learned, actually, in the process of reporting my Putin book was that when I went back and listened to his interviews and his press conferences, unfortunately, the man has such a small presence that it was possible to listen to everything he had said and study it in some detail. So when I did that, I realized that he. It was all out there. He said exactly what he was planning to do. But people both in Russia and in this country had ideas about what he represented that had nothing to do with.

[D]

What he was putting forward another rule is the institutions will not save you. Do you think they've held up a little bit better than you had expected?

[B]

I don't, actually. I don't think they've held up better than I expected. And I think the damage he's been able to do has been profound and has perhaps even been more profound than I thought in the first two years. I mean, I think the Kavanaugh confirmation has been great. Amazing illustration of that. Right. I mean, now here's the great institution of the Supreme Court that just stands, I think, exposed. You know, would the curtain pull back in a way that maybe sort of emotionally we could have anticipated a couple of years ago, but I don't think we could have imagined? I mean, it is shocking.

[D]

What do you say to the argument that, you know, the Supreme Court's a great example? I mean, the real kind of norm breaking there was the refusal to seat Merrick Garland or even to discuss Merrick garland by Mitch McConnell. Right. So that predates Trump.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't. You know, Trump didn't come out from outer space. He did not actually come from Russia. He came from here. And we're out of time.

[D]

All right, that's great. Thank you. Thank you all.

[C]

The New Yorker's Masha Gessen talking with her brother, Keith Gessen. And between the two of them, they've written more than a dozen books and more than a thousand articles, many of which have appeared in the pages of the New Yorker. Keith's most recent book is a novel set in Russia called A Terrible Country. And Masha's most recent book also deals with Russia, but it's nonfiction. It's called the Future Is History.

[E]

What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis, and maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

[D]

I want a shark that.

[E]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[D]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[E]

Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.

[B]

Tell me more.

[E]

Listen to the big interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

From.

[D]

PRX.