Putin Is 'Profoundly Anti-Modern.' Masha Gessen Explains What That Means for the World
About this episode
New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen, a leading chronicler of Putin's Russia, argues that Putin is 'profoundly anti-modern' — his regime rests on rejecting modernity's promises of change, agency, and an open future. Gessen explains how this worldview makes sense of the war on Ukraine: Ukraine's Western orientation and democratic aspirations are intolerable precisely because they show post-Soviet societies can choose a different path. The conversation covers the crushing of Russian civil society and independent media, the exodus of journalists and activists, the performative politics of the Kremlin, and why Gessen sees Putin's war as a war on information and reality itself. Klein and Gessen close by discussing what exile means, how Russians abroad relate to the war, and what resistance looks like now.