Masha Gessen Quotes

Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.

Putin is like Al Capone.

In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true. America has become more like Russia: a kleptocratic society.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it's worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.

The big insight that I have, not so much from writing 'Red Notice' but from living as the main character of 'Red Notice', is that Russia was and is a criminal state unlike any other sovereign country.

Modern authoritarianism, as it's growing inside Europe and now coming to the United States, rests much more on the use of power to protect the guilty than to persecute the innocent. And its motive is not crazy totalitarian utopianism, it's motive is repressive kleptocracy. To steal and to use the powers of the state to protect theft.

The Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic mafia the world has ever known.

The first country conquered by any dictator is his own country.

Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves.

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

This resemblance became clear in the Bush the father's visits to the region. He wound up being impressed by the royal and military regimes and envied them for staying decades in their positions and embezzling the nation's money with no supervision.

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.

Dictators, unlike Democrats, depend on a small coterie to sustain their power. These backers, generally drawn from the military, the senior civil service, and family or clan members, have a synergistic relationship with their dictator. The dictator delivers opportunities for them to become rich, and they protect him from being overthrown.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

A state is not a state if it belongs to one man.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.