Masha Gessen Quotes
I wanted to show something that Americans don't usually think about when they think about Russia, which is the extreme stratification of Soviet society.
Gessen, Masha. Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 1 Mar. 2012.
This was a big factor that made the Red Scare so damaging.
Harriman at that time was the United States Ambassador to Russia and one of President Roosevelt’s closest advisers. There were those who claimed that the Roosevelt administration was very naïve about the potential danger of Stalin. This statement as well as others like it, show that the administration was not so naïve and ignorant.
The speech writer, Anthony R. Dolan, had written, “Now and forever, Russia is an Evil Empire. Reagan crossed out “Now and forever” as he had the optimism that the Soviet Union would fall and Russia would reform at a time when only Senator Pat Moynahan had ever suggested the idea.
This was one of the first of the world communist leaders who had concluded that the Russian communist state and its revolution had failed. Russia of 1923 was perceived as too dictatorial and not democratic enough. At the same time they thought Russia had not only sold out the democratic nature of communism but also the economic as well by having too much private property and making economic deals with Western capitalists giving concessions of all kinds to Krupp and other major Multinational companies to try and develop international trade and investment. Politically the communist critics thought Russian communism too left wing and undemocratic and economically too right wing and capitalistic.
Seeger had joined the Young Communist League as a young boy, and was a supporter of Joseph Stalin until all the information about Stalin was made public by Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Seeger, along with other Stalin apologists throughout the world realized that the criticisms of Russian Communism under Stalin were not just right wing propaganda.
The “execution” to which she refers was the famous speech given to communist party leaders by Nikita Khrushchev where he publicly revealed the worst crimes of Stalin and Stalinist Russia. Prior to that, publicly Stalin was godlike in the Soviet Union. Decades of disillusionment with Stalinist Russia set the stage for the fall of the Soviet Union which was also accompanied by massive corruption, economic chaos and a diminution of the standard of living of most Russians. Some, including many of the younger people who had not lived through the Stalinist horrors, were resentful that the great era of Soviet military, scientific, and political greatness and dominance was completely overshadowed by the revelation of the purges, gulags, terror and murder. Prudnikova represents that school of thought.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist who has been an outspoken critic of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the former President of the United States, Donald Trump.
