Lessons from a 'totalitarian mafia state' (Part I)

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin was an agent of the KGB — the Soviet Union's secret police. It's no accident that he's now the leader of a post-Soviet country controlled once again by bureaucrats who were never purged in the interests of freedom and democracy. Masha Gessen is a journalist who left Putin's Russia.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin was an agent of the KGB — the Soviet Union's secret police. It's no accident that he's now the leader of a post-Soviet country controlled once again by bureaucrats who were never purged in the interests of freedom and democracy. Masha Gessen is a journalist who left Putin's Russia. Her latest book is The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. (Listen to Part II.)

Credits

Guest:
Masha Gessen - staff writer at the New Yorker - @mashagessen

Host:
Warren Olney

Producers:
Yael Even Or, Andrea Brody, Evan George, Devan Schwartz