The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Yakovlev, Alexander Nikolaevich, 36-37, 76, 79-88, 93-94, 143-49, 195, 248-50 Yakunin, Vladimir, 457 Yanaev, Gennady, 89, 90, 91 Yanukovych, Viktor, 239, 424 Year of Agreement and Reconciliation, 162 Yedinstvo ("Unity") political party, 204 Yekaterinburg massacre, apology for, 17.5-79 Yeltsin, Boris accusations of constitutional violations, 384 choice of successor, 171-74, 187-88, 198-99 and coup attempt (1991), 92 "Execution of the White House," 111-15 fight against Communist Party, 162-63 leader of "democrats" and Democratic Russia, 73-74, 82-83 legalization of private commerce, 108-9 and Nemtsov, 94 new national idea, 174-79 and oligarchs, 190-91 resignation of, 209-10 speech on Yekaterinburg massacre, 175-79 successes, 104-5 Yesenin, Sergei, 35

Yushchenko, Viktor, 239-40

Zakaria, Fareed, 383-84 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 116 Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 71 Zygar, Mikhail, 238

© Tanya Sazansky

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

masha gessen is a Russian-American journalist and the author of several books, among them The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Reviewof Books, The New Yorker, Slate, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. A longtime resident of Moscow, Gessen now lives in New York City.

FACEBOOK.COM/GESSEN TWITTER: @MASHAGESSEN INSTAGRAM: @MASHAGESSEN

*English-language readers are generally more familiar with a different version of the phrase: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." The Russian translation is closer to the original but was usually learned out of context, just as it was in Western popular culture. The passage from which the phrase is culled reads as follows: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,

trans. Joseph O'Malley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 3.

*The anniversary of the October Revolution falls on November 7 because czarist Russia had kept its own calendar, one devoid of leap years. By the year 1917, it had fallen thirteen days "behind" the Western calendar—and once the days were adjusted by the Bolsheviks, the latter part of October became November.

*In fact, it appears that Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev returned from Canada in 1983, a time Seryozha cannot remember. His recollection, however, is a family reunion occurring simultaneously with the beginning of perestroika.

*About seventy-five miles.

*Yegor Gaidar's grandfathers were Arkady Gaidar, author of Communist children's literature, and Pavel Bazhov, a collector and reteller of fairy tales. His widow, Maria Strugatskaya, is the daughter of science fiction writer Arkady Strugatsky.

*

Bomzh stands for bez opredelyonnogo mesta zhitel'stva—"~w'ithout a definite place of residence"—invented by Soviet law and order when the system of residence registration began to disintegrate.

*The title of the book is usually translated into English as Into the Whirlwind.

*The film was produced by Konstantin Ernst, who went on to head Channel 1, and Leonid Parfenov, who became probably the best-known and best-loved post-Soviet television host and filmmaker.

*The dynasty of the czars.

*In the 1930s, when the Soviet government reinstated many of the traditions of pre- Revolutionary life, the Christmas tree was reincarnated in the secular tradition of a New Year's tree, decorated for a celebration on December 31. The tradition survives to this day.

*CheKa, or Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, was the original name of the Soviet secret police.

*Yakovlev used the word vozhdism, sometimes translated as the German Ftihrerprinzip.

^Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia.

*The Snow Maiden, granddaughter of Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost, the secular alternative to Santa Claus that had been rolled over from Soviet tradition.