Maria (Masha) Alexandrovna Gessen(born January 13, Moscow) - Russian and American journalist, writer, former director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty, author of a number of books, activist of the LGBT movement.

Biography

Born in Moscow into a Jewish family. Father Alexander Borisovich Gessen (born 1944) is a programmer, later an entrepreneur (his second marriage, since 1999, was to actress Tatyana Veselova). Mother Elena Samuilovna Minkina (1942-1992) - translator and literary critic. Her paternal grandmother, Esther Yakovlevna Goldberg (married Gessen; 1923-2014) is a translator and memoirist, worked in the magazine “Soviet Literature”, widow of Boris Arnoldovich Gessen (1919-1980), son of Pushkin scholar A. I. Gessen. Her maternal grandmother, Rosalia Moiseevna Solodovnik (born 1920), was a history teacher by training, in the post-war years she worked as a telegram censor at the Central Telegraph in Moscow, and later as a translator. literary prose from English and German; widow of Lieutenant Samuil Lvovich Minkin (1919-1942) who died at the front.

She writes in both Russian and English; her articles have been published in US publications The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta And Slate, and in Russia - in the magazines “New Time”, “Itogi”, “Big City”, “Znamya”. In 2000-2001, Gessen headed the bureau of the American weekly US News & World Report. She was the head of the Polit.ru portal (2002-2003), deputy editor-in-chief of the Bolshoy Gorod magazine (2004-2005), editor-in-chief of the Gala magazine in Russia (2007-2008), one of the chief editors of the Snob project (2008 -2011) .

In 2011, it was reported that Gessen had written a book on English entitled "The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin" The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin), which was scheduled for release on March 1, 2012 by the publishing house Riverhead Books in the USA. The Washington Post wrote:

From the beginning of 2012 to September 1, 2012, Masha Gessen worked as editor-in-chief of the magazine and publishing house “Around the World”. On September 1, 2012, Gessen left this post. The reason for the dismissal, according to her, was “disagreements regarding the division of powers between the editorial board and the management.” Gessen announced her dismissal on her microblog on Twitter. “I’m leaving around the world #thanks to Putin for this,” the journalist wrote. Later she explained the essence of the disagreements with the owner of the publication. Maria Gessen refused to comply with her employer's request to cover the expedition with the participation of President Vladimir Putin to save the Siberian Cranes.

Great interest The public was aroused by Gessen's story about a conversation with V. Putin in the Kremlin on September 11, 2012, after the head of state, alarmed by Gessen's dismissal from the post of editor-in-chief, called her on her mobile phone and offered to personally clarify the situation in the presence of the owner of the publishing house "Around the World" Sergei Vasiliev. At a meeting in the Kremlin, where, in addition to the internal publishing conflict, Putin’s sensational ecological expeditions and environmental actions were discussed, Masha learned from her interlocutor a lot of previously unknown and sensational details about his saving the Siberian Cranes, putting collars on the tigress and polar bear, stories with a leopard and ancient amphorae. During the conversation, Putin, as a reader, expressed his desire for Gessen to remain the editor-in-chief of the magazine, but after twenty-four hours of deliberation she refused. According to presidential press secretary D. Peskov, Maria Gessen, apart from minor flaws, generally correctly presented her conversation with Putin.

From September 13, 2012, she was the director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty; she left the post of director on April 30, 2013. During this time, the entire Internet editorial staff was fired. Describing the activities of the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty during the period of Gessen’s leadership, the Washington magazine World Affairs noted that it “ practically dead in every way", and responsibility for the collapse of the editorial board lies entirely with Gessen.

On May 19, 2013, Gessen announced her intention to leave Russia and move to New York due to security concerns.

Personal life and views

Masha Gessen does not hide her homosexuality and advocates for the protection of the rights of sexual minorities. She is raising three children (one adopted and two natural). Vova's son (born in 1997) was adopted in Kaliningrad. Daughter Yolka (born in 2001) is Masha’s own daughter. During her maternity leave, Masha went to give birth in the USA.

In the 1990s, Maria Gessen was one of Russia's leading LGBT activists. Together with Evgenia Debryanskaya, she participated in the organization of the all-Russian LGBT organization “Triangle”, and participated in the abolition of the criminal article persecuting gays. Gessen continues to advocate for LGBT rights, in particular, she opposes laws banning the promotion of homosexuality.

On June 11, 2012, in an interview with the Australian radio station ABC Radio National, Masha Gessen stated:

Fighting for same-sex marriage actually involves lying about what we'll do about marriage when we get our way - because we're lying that the institution of marriage won't change, and that's a lie. The institution of marriage will change and must change. Again, I don't think it should exist... I would like to live under a system of laws that can reflect reality, and I don't think it's compatible with the institution of marriage

In 2004, the marriage of Masha Gessen with Russian citizen Svetlana Generalova (better known as Svenya Generalova), who worked for five years, was registered in the United States. public organizations gays and lesbians, then worked at home with children, by last profession - photographer, took photographs for the magazine “Snob” edited by Masha Gessen and the magazine of the Moscow Jewish community “Lechaim”, as well as for online publications; He also has a specialty as a builder. The second marriage was registered with Daria Oreshkina, cartographer and graphic designer, candidate of geographical sciences (2006).

Family

Criticism

Analyzing Gessen’s article “The Dying Russians” dated September 2, 2014, Forbes journalist Mark Adomanis comes to the conclusion that the article is “littered with factual errors.” According to Adomanis, after reading Gessen’s article, a person who is not a specialist “may have a false picture about the demography of Russia.”

Bibliography

Maria Gessen is the author of more than a dozen books, among which the most famous are “Perfect Rigor” (about the mathematician Grigory Perelman, 2009), “The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin” (2012) and “Words Will Destroy Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot” (2014 ). All her books were written in English, some have been translated foreign languages. The book about Putin was also released in audiobook format, where the text is read by Canadian actress Justine Eyre.

Articles

• Masha Gessen (6 November 2009). “Russia"s Conquering Zeros”. The Wall Street Journal.

Books

• Masha Gessen. The Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men in the Russian Republic. - International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Comm, 1993. - P. 60. - ISBN 9781884955136.
• Half a Revolution: Contemporary Fiction by Russian Women / Masha Gessen. - Cleis Press, 1995. - P. 269. - ISBN 9781573440066.
• Masha Gessen. Dead Again: The Russian Intelligentsia after Communism. - Verso, 1997. - P. 211. - ISBN 9781859841471.
• Masha Gessen. Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace. - Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2004. - P. 320. - ISBN 9780747564096.(re-released in 2005 under the title "Two Babushkas")
• Masha Gessen. Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene. - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. - P. 336. - ISBN 9780151013623.(a New York Times Notable Book of the year, republished by Granta Books as Blood Matters: A Journey Along the Genetic Frontier)
• Masha Gessen. Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century. - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. - P. 256. - ISBN 978-0151014064.; translated into Russian: Perfect severity. - M.: Astrel: Corpus, 2011. - 272 p. - ISBN 978-5-271-33232-6
• Masha Gessen. The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. - New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. - ISBN 9781594488429.
• Masha Gessen. Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot. - Riverhead Hardcover, 2014. - P. 320. - ISBN 978-1-59463-219-8.
• Masha Gessen. The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy. - Penguin, 2015. - P. 290.
• Masha Gessen. Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region. - Random House & Schocken, 2016. - P. 192.
• Masha Gessen. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaims Russia. - Riverhead Books, 2017. - P. 400. - ISBN 978-1-59463-453-6.

Edited and translated by Masha Gessen

• Valeriia Narbikova. In the Here and There. Translated by Masha Gessen. Ardis, 1999. - 145 p.
• Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories. Edited by Masha Gessen. OR Books, 2014. - 224 p.

Translated editions

• Ester and Ruzya. Unas memorias familiares de las purgas de Stalin al Ho: del auge del sionismo a la caída del comunismo. - Ediciones Peninsula, 2006. (Spanish)
• אסתר ורוזיה כיצד שרדו שתי הסבתות שלי את שנות המלחמה של היטלר ואת שנ ות השלום של סטלין (“Ester and Ruzya” in Hebrew). New Year's Eve, 2007.
• Esther und Rusja: Wie meine Großmütter Hitlers Krieg und Stalins Frieden überlebten (in German). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008.
• Estera i Rozia (in Polish). Muza, 2008.
• El hombre sin rostro: El sorprendente ascenso de Vladimir Putin (on Spanish). Debate Editorial, 2012.
• Putin: Czlowiek bez twarzy (in Polish). Prószynski i S-ka, 2012.
• Putin: l’uomo senza volto (in Italian). Bompiani, 2012.
• Poutine: L'homme sans visage (in French). Fayard, 2012.
• פוטין: האיש ללא פנים (“Putin” in Hebrew). New Year's Eve, 2012.
• Putin: Mannen Uten Ansikt (in Norwegian). Gyldendal, 2012.
• Putin: Manden uden ansigt (in Danish). Forlaget Rosinante, 2012.
• Putin: A Face Oculta do Novo Czar (in Brazilian Portuguese). Nova Fronteira, 2012.
• Βλαντιμίρ Πούτιν: Ο άνθρωπος δίχως πρόσωπο (“Putin” in Greek). Ekdoseis Pataki, 2012.
• De man zonder gezicht: de macht van Vladimir Poetin (in Dutch). Ambo/Anthos Uitgevers, 2012.
• 完全なる証明―100万ドルを拒否した天才数学者 (“Perfect Rigor” in Japanese). 文藝春秋, 2012.
• Dans la tête d’un génie (“Perfect Rigor” on French). Editeur Globe, 2013.
• そいつを黙らせろ―プーチンの極秘指令 (“Putin” in Japanese). 柏書房, 2013.
• Der Beweis des Jahrhunderts: Die faszinierende Geschichte des Mathematikers Grigori Perelman (“Perfect Rigor” in German). Suhrkamp Verlag, 2014.
• Slowa skrusza mury (“Words Will Break Cement” on Polish language). Proszynski Media, 2014.
• Ord kan krossa betong: berättelsen om Pussy Riot (“Words Will Break Cement” in Swedish). Bromberg, 2014.
• Putin: Yüzü Olmayan Adam (in Turkish). Epsilon Yayincilik, 2015.
• Palavras quebrarão cimento: a paixão de Pussy Riot (in Portuguese). Martins Fontes - Selo Martins, 2017.
• I fratelli Tsarnaev: Una moderna tragedia americana (on

Masha Gessen lives on two continents: in America she is a popular writer, in Russia she is a journalist. The first thing you need to know about Gessen is that she hates being called Maria. Therefore it is not necessary. She also doesn’t like stupidity, so all her books and articles are about how life works in its various manifestations.

Photo RIA Novosti / Valery Levitin

Along with Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel and ex-President of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbaevava, Masha Gessen was included in the list of the 150 most influential women in the world, according to the publication Newsweek Daily Beast.

Masha Gessen was born in the Soviet Union, moved to the United States as a teenager, and throughout her life adult life was between two peoples alien to each other. Her intimate knowledge of both cultures gives her a unique understanding of the politics, fears and national myths of each of the two societies.

On his deep skepticism about the American media's obsession with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russian side during the 2016 election, Gessen spoke with David Remnick - who covered the fall Soviet Union as Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post.

As an outspoken critic of Putin, Gessen warns of "inflated expectations" for the Mueller investigation.

“The picture that is revealed to us in the end will not be as definite and obvious as we expect,” says Gessen. - This will not lead to impeachment. Even if everything was more specific, we would just sit there and think, “What, really? And he still sits in the presidential chair?”

About presidential elections

Presidential elections will take place in Russia in March, and Putin has virtually no rivals, no opposition, and no chance of losing.

“You can’t get on the ballot without Putin’s permission,” Gessen comments in an interview with David Remnick. - IN at the moment There are several people listed there, some of whom no one has even heard of. One of the candidates - Ksenia Sobchak - is a very interesting project. This young woman, in my opinion, is really trying to use this campaign to raise issues that are not usually talked about in Russia, and she is doing it in a quite bold way.

She traveled to Chechnya and spoke about political assassinations, something that no Russian politician has done in the last decade. Not everyone can decide to do this. She also said that Alexei Navalny... (famous anti-corruption activist... - Remnik's remark) ... is the person who would have the highest chance of defeating Putin if he were allowed to run.

It's amazing that this man is still walking the streets and - what's even more amazing - still doing his job.

All media are controlled by Putin. Debates are held, but he does not participate in them, considering it beneath his dignity. The political issues of the day are never talked about, so even allowing free, open and fair elections to take place would require significant structural and cultural shifts. First of all, they would need to think about the results of this kind of shift, and in the event of such an election being held directly, Putin would indeed be incredibly vulnerable.”

About Stalin, by the way

Putin will be 66 this year, and his new presidential term will last another 6 years,” notes David Remnick in an interview.

I always advise people to read Joshua Rubinstein's excellent book ( Joshua Rubenstein) "The Last Days of Stalin", which describes the widespread turmoil that gripped the country after Stalin's death, and the absence of any succession plan at that time.

Stalin absolutely believed that he would never die. There will be complete chaos, and at that moment anything can happen.

On the relationship between Trump and Putin

He (Putin) hated Clinton, but even the suggestion of a possible Trump victory seemed funny. Putin always called him a clown. Trump interpreted his words in his favor and considered them a compliment.

Putin then called him “bright,” but what he meant was that he was a clown, a misunderstanding. Putin doesn’t really believe that there are elections with unpredictable outcomes, which is especially funny because everyone, including Putin, was preparing for Clinton to win, but Trump won.

And the fact that his victory was attributed to Putin, thus making him the most influential person in the world, really amused many. But I certainly think he would have an easier time dealing with someone more predictable, like Hillary Clinton.

Trump's victory left Putin dismayed. If you watch Russian television, all they talk about is how Trump failed to lift sanctions related to Ukraine, how the war in Syria is still considered a war by Russia against the United States, and so on. Yes, Trump does not suit anyone, he is unpredictable, he does not allow Putin to demonstrate his strength to the same extent that Hillary’s aggressive position would allow him. Plus he's difficult to deal with.

About Trump and the gay community

Masha Gessen, an outspoken critic of President Putin, criticizes President Trump with no less conviction. “I, unfortunately, predicted anti-LGBTQ ( community who came to the USA from the post-Soviet space) Trump's policies when he was still wrapped in the rainbow flag, says Gessen. – I wrote that he would advance progress in the field of LGBTQ rights, because this is the most rapid and most recent social change in our country. And he wants to make it clear to his voters: I’m turning everything around, I’m taking you back to an imaginary past. In this way he very effectively communicates: I am taking away from you what makes your present so uncomfortable and your future so scary.”

About the nickname

“As a matter of principle, I don’t write under a pseudonym,” says Masha Gessen about herself. — Once, when I was literally writing from underground (in Belgrade during the NATO bombing, when all foreign journalists were expelled, and I, on the contrary, moved in, pretending to be in love with a Serbian guy - I wanted, supposedly, to be next to him in a difficult moment), I wrote a series articles under the signature “Anonymous” and several more under the signature Michael Griffin. All".

About decent people

Photo facebook.com/gessen

“In the late 90s, my neighbor in the staircase was Garik Sukachev. In total, the house had 4 floors, 2 apartments on each. I lived on the second floor. One day Garik rang the doorbell and offered to renovate the entrance. The proposal was made in the following form: “Decent people come to you, Masha, and to me. Let's do some repairs at the entrance." It was immediately clear why Garik was turning to me: the rest of the residents of the entrance were visited by less “decent” people. Well, the entrance really needed repairs: the house was built in 1905, the staircase was knocked down to death, wrought-iron railings with huge gaps, the door to the entrance was a double-leaf wooden one, only one half opened, and it rested halfway on the asphalt. The deal is good and inexpensive: Garik said that if the two of us chip in, he will organize everything himself. I immediately gave him the said amount. And Garik actually immediately hired a crew and made repairs - on our floor. On the second. Apparently because this is the only floor that decent people go to.”

About gays and cadets

Gessen, a journalist and gay rights activist, highlights one small example of resistance to Putin's rule in the run-up to the Russian presidential elections in March 2018. She welcomes the support and solidarity that the gay parody video, filmed by fourteen teenage cadets at a flight school located north of the Arctic Circle, has received. Following the broadcast of the video by state media and its public condemnation, the Russian Internet was flooded with similar amateur clips, parodies of a 2002 music video by Italian DJ Benny Benassi entitled " Satisfaction"("Satisfaction").

The pro-cadet videos, many of which were accompanied by the hashtag #satisfaction, glorify homosexuality to a degree that Gessen could not even imagine was possible in such a deeply homophobic society, where the state carried out a rationally organized six-year anti-gay campaign.

“This is the best and most inspiring of all the stories originating in Russia that I have described over the past few years,” says Gessen. “Suddenly, videos started appearing in support of those students. And this was not mere skits or mindless filming - this was a completely organized enterprise, as well as a very inspiring show of solidarity."

Gessen once wrote for the New Yorker that in Chechnya, homosexual men and women were imprisoned and isolated from society in the most brutal way. In Russia today the situation appears to be similar.

“They hunted down and arrested gays. Lesbians too, but mostly gays - and not because the attitude towards lesbians is more lenient, but because the family of such a woman, having learned about her inclinations, would simply kill her. Gay men were arrested, tortured, forced to name men with similar tendencies, and then usually handed over to their families with orders to kill them. And in a number of cases such executions actually took place.”

Biography facts

Maria Gessen did not graduate from the Moscow 57th Physics and Mathematics School because she left with her parents for America. Didn't finish school there Brookline High School(in general, due to a misunderstanding, but the sediment remained), then did not graduate from two institutes - Cooper Union in New York and Rhode Island School of Design, both majoring in architecture - then another institute and two graduate schools, specializing in “history of social movements”, “ American history"and jurisprudence.

Having already given up studying officially, she managed to twice be a scholarship student at Harvard University, and so gradually built up her education. In 1991 she returned to Moscow. Since 1993 she settled in Moscow. Her brother Konstantin (Keith) Gessen is also a journalist. There is also a younger brother, Daniil (born 2000).

In January 2004, a mutation in the BRCA1 gene was discovered in Gessen. breast cancer- breast cancer), in which she lacked the 187th allele, and because of this the gene could not perform its function - to stop the uncontrolled reproduction of breast tissue cells, which, in the presence of a mutation, begins sooner or later in 87% of cases, develops quickly and ends in death. Her mother died at 49, her aunt at 52. In August 2005, Gessen had surgery to remove her breasts due to a genetic predisposition to breast cancer, about which (and the social significance of genetics) she wrote a book in 2008.

In 2011, it was reported that Gessen had written a book in English entitled The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin. The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin), which was scheduled for release on March 1, 2012 by the publishing house Riverhead Books[ en] in the USA. Newspaper The Washington Post wrote:

“In his book, Gessen describes how Putin, an initially unimportant native of the KGB, who managed to return to the committee and even head it, was chosen by Boris Yeltsin as his successor and then quickly destroyed almost all the beginnings of democracy in Russia, while simultaneously strengthening his authoritarianism to the extent brutality.

The book grew out of a portrait article that Gessen wrote about Putin in October 2008 for the magazine Vanity Fair. She describes a "secretive, lonely man" becoming "increasingly distant" from his wife and riding a custom black Audi with license plate 007.

Ten years after Putin came to power, Russia is a changed country. Democratic reforms of the early 90s were given a reversal. They almost got rid of elections. Power in the country is concentrated in the hands of a small group of people, even to a greater extent than during the Soviet era.”

On May 19, 2013, Gessen announced her intention to leave Russia and move to New York for security reasons.

Masha Gessen does not hide her homosexuality and advocates for the protection of the rights of sexual minorities. She is raising three children (one adopted and two natural). Vova's son (born in 1997) was adopted in Kaliningrad. Daughter Yolka (born in 2001) is Masha’s own daughter. During maternity leave Masha went to give birth in the USA.

In the 1990s, Maria Gessen was one of Russia's leading LGBT activists. Together with Evgenia Debryanskaya, she participated in the organization of the all-Russian LGBT organization “Triangle”, and participated in the abolition of the criminal article persecuting gays. Gessen continues to advocate for LGBT rights, in particular, she opposes laws banning the promotion of homosexuality.

June 11, 2012 in an interview with an Australian radio station ABC Radio National Masha Gessen stated:

“Fighting for same-sex marriage actually involves lying about what we will do about marriage when we get our way - because we are lying that the institution of marriage will not change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage will change and must change. Again, I don’t think it should exist... I would like to live under a system of laws that can reflect reality, and I don’t think it’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”

In 2004, the marriage of Masha Gessen with Russian citizen Svetlana Generalova (better known as Svenya Generalova) was registered in the United States, who worked for five years in public organizations for gays and lesbians, after which she worked at home with children, and was a photographer in her last profession, taking photographs for the edited Masha Gessen magazine " Snob" and the magazine of the Moscow Jewish community “Lechaim”, as well as for online publications; He also has a specialty as a builder. The second marriage was registered with Daria Oreshkina, cartographer and graphic designer, candidate of geographical sciences (2006).

Masha Gessen with Daria Oreshkina. Photo facebook.com/darya.oreshkina

Maria Gessen is the author of more than a dozen books, including “Perfect Rigor” (about mathematician Grigory Perelman, 2009), “The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin” (2012) and “Words Will Destroy Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot” (2014). ). All her books were written in English, some were translated into a number of foreign languages.

Putin's stronghold of power freaks Masha Gessen and Pussy Riot?
Will Putin's power be swept away by cheese riots? Lesbian and journalist Masha Gessen told Western media the sensational truth about same-sex...

8 mistakes from Masha Gessen’s article on Russian demography
Renowned Russian journalist and commentator Masha Gessen recently published an article in the New York Review of Books about the demographic state of Russia. As one of...

“Did you let it slip?” or hello to cultural Marxists
Once again I was convinced that the isolation of the Russian-language segment of the network from the English-language Internet is sometimes felt especially acutely. It turns out that on a huge number of Western...

Quotes:

Biography:

Maria (Masha) Aleksandrovna Gessen (January 13, 1967, Moscow) is a Russian and American journalist, former director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty, author of a number of books, activist of the LGBT movement.

She writes in both Russian and English, her articles have been published in the USA in The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta and Slate, and in Russia in the magazines “Novoye Vremya”, “Itogi”, “Bolshoi Gorod”, “ Banner". In 2000-2001, Gessen headed the bureau of the American weekly US News & World Report. She was the head of the Polit.ru portal (2002-2003), deputy editor-in-chief of the Big City magazine (2004-2005), editor-in-chief of the Gala magazine in Russia (2007-2008), one of the chief editors of the Snob project (2008 —2011)

On May 19, 2013, Gessen announced her intention to leave Russia and move to New York for security reasons

Masha Gessen does not hide her homosexuality and advocates for the protection of the rights of sexual minorities. She has two children, both of whom are US citizens. Vova's son (born in 1997) was adopted in Kaliningrad. Daughter Yolka (born in 2001) is Masha’s own daughter. During her maternity leave, Masha went to give birth in the USA.

In the 1990s, Maria Gessen was one of Russia's leading LGBT activists. Together with Evgenia Debryanskaya, she participated in the organization of the all-Russian LGBT organization “Triangle”, and participated in the abolition of the criminal article persecuting gays. Gessen continues to actively advocate for LGBT rights, in particular she actively opposes laws on “homosexual propaganda”

In 2004, the marriage of Masha Gessen with Russian citizen Svetlana Generalova (better known to the general public as Svenya Generalova) was registered in the United States, who worked for five years in public organizations of gays and lesbians, after which she worked at home with children, and by her last profession - photographer, made photographs for the magazine “Snob” edited by Masha Gessen and the magazine of the Moscow Jewish community “Lechaim”, as well as for online publications; also has a specialty as a builder

Maria Gessen is the author of several books, among which the most famous books are “The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin” (2012) and “Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot” (2014). Both books were written in English and translated into a number of foreign languages. The book about Putin was also released in audiobook format, where the text is read by the famous Canadian actress Justine Eyre

Masha Gessen is a treasure. Gorgeous. Perfection. The concentration of all possible advantages. The limit of dreams. We need to sell tickets for it.

Each society creates its own ideal of a person, a man, a woman, a citizen. By this ideal one can say a lot about this very society. The Soviet ideal of a woman was voiced by the actor Etush in the film “Prisoner of the Caucasus”: “A student, a cosmopolitan, an athlete, and finally, just a beauty” and embodied by actress Natalya Varley.

The current world, based on positive discrimination of the majority in favor of all kinds of minorities, has also given birth to its own superhero, its “student, Komsomol member, athlete.”

This is Masha Gessen - a person and a phenomenon. She is the sum of all minorities - a lesbian, a Jew, had breast surgery, was twice in same-sex marriage, a fighter for our and your democracy, two adopted children, author of books about Putin. Abyss! An abyss of advantages! She even has a pedigree, not a pedigree, but a hymn!!!

Masha does an excellent job of illustrating the minority society’s idea of ​​the ideal - everything can be seen at once and unnecessary questions dry up and fall off by themselves.

In addition to a very expressive form, which in itself serves as a source of strong emotions, Masha also has internal content, which she generously shares with us.

The hedgehog understands that homosexuals have the right to create marital unions, but I also think it is no less obvious that the institution of marriage should not exist at all... The fight for the right of gays to enter into marital relationships is usually accompanied by lies about our plans for the institution of marriage as such after we reach the goal. The fact is that we are lying when we say that the institution of marriage will remain unchanged. After all, this is a lie.

The institution of marriage is about to change, and it must change. And, I repeat once again, it must cease to exist.

I'm not going to spread speculation about my life. This is not what I set out to do when I began social activism 30 years ago.

I have three children who had, more or less (sic), five parents, and I don't understand why they can't legally have five parents... I got married in Massachusetts to my now ex-partner (she was from Russia) By that time we already had two children - one adopted, the other I gave birth to. A few years later we separated, and I met my new partner, who already had a child. This child's biological father is my brother, and my daughter's biological father is a man living in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. In general, five parents find themselves divided into two or three groups...

Indeed, I would like to live under a legal system that would be able to reflect this reality. And I think it is incompatible with the institution of marriage.

At such moments, more than ever, you want to slam your hand on the table and, like Evstigneev in the role of Professor Preobrazhensky, say, “That’s what I thought. That’s exactly what I thought!”

Now I’ll perhaps explain why I was waiting for such a statement, why I knew that such a statement would definitely be made.

Firstly, the problem of minorities itself is a sublevel of the problem of understanding the norm. Therefore, minorities will diligently destroy everything that denies them as the norm. For them it is a matter of achieving fullness. There is such a struggle going on here that there is no mercy for anyone. Recently even our Robin Hood got it: If only the defender environment- gay Robin Hood was reborn today, he would become a hero of the struggle against brutal homophobic autocrats such as Putin, Lukashenko, Viktor Orban: the peoples oppressed by them would need him. Robin Hood is looking at you, you sneaky straight homophobe!

Secondly, the policy of nurturing minorities only justifies itself when minorities conflict with the majority and weaken it. And the family is one of the cornerstones of society, a cell for the reproduction of citizens, the most durable social institution and a form of self-organization of people. The destruction of this institution will make each “liberated” individual much more dependent on the environment and controllable. Atomization, the organization of separate solitude for each person, is the most important task assigned to minorities by the modern science of mass control in advanced countries

... And there is one more aspect of this problem that I would like to dwell on in more detail.

Usually, when you ask a question about what the meaning of family is, the answer you hear is either about procreation, or about the fact that family is the basis of society. This is all absolutely true, but that's not all.

There are such wonderful expressions “Husband and wife are one Satan” and “Husband by wife/wife by husband is saved.”

We are talking about the absolutely magical quality of the family - the ability to deepen and develop a person. About the property of preserving the human in a person. Family is an amazing state in which one person becomes a way for another to discover their talent to love, trust, be faithful, and create themselves for the sake of another person. And this process is reciprocal.

Can a person live without a family and develop?

History knows cases of truly great people who did not start families. But it was still, as a rule, their tragedy, the awareness of which was accompanied by a feeling of deprivation among the greats.

There is another option for personal development outside the family. In the conditions of monastic feat - another path of salvation.

And in conditions of comfortable and entertaining promiscuity, only personality degradation is possible.

Promiscuity is bad not only because it can cause clap, AIDS and children from a person whom you can sincerely hate ten minutes after you had sex. Promiscuity destroys our capacity for genuine, deep, complete love and trust. And these abilities are the main properties of our personality and the main ways of its development. Promiscuity destroys personality. That is why “adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of God” - there is no one to accept the inheritance, there is no person capable of this.

Believe me, an experienced sinner, I know what I'm talking about.

A person knows himself precisely in love and through it he knows humanity.

The problem is that in a secularized, strictly anti-Christian consciousness, such as the consciousness of Masha Gessen, the family is an instrument for people to consume each other financially, sexually and socially. And no more.

The denial of love ultimately, if fully consistent, leads to the denial of a person.

It's simply true.

And what we just read from the victim of such denial is another illustration of this truth.

P.S. Viktor Marakhovsky

I would like to add one thing to what my colleague said. It is extremely symbolic that M. Hessen, who wants to destroy the institution of marriage, has now been appointed to lead such a significant Soviet people Institute, as the Russian-language editorial office of the American propaganda Radio Liberty.

This is not only symbolic, but also fair. This radio at one time made a significant and serious contribution to the destruction of adequacy in the minds of the Soviet intelligentsia. It is possible that young Masha’s parents took her to the United States under his influence.

It's time for payback. Because, raised in an emigrant environment, the near-intellectual, don’t understand that, I mean Maria Alexandrovna, has not just a craving for the destruction of institutions, but also an undoubted talent for this. Maria Alexandrovna Gessen previously managed to ruin not only such large-budget projects as “Snob”, but also such very traditional institutions as “Around the World”.

There is an opinion that not very much time will pass - and Maria Alexandrovna will devour this radio that gave birth to her...