Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Masha Gessen:

Ukrainians saw war just a few years ago, and in fact, have had this ongoing conflict in the east of the country. But there’s just something awful about that dread and that sense of powerlessness, and knowing that your life is being taken away from you, in ways you can’t predict, and you won’t probably be able to account for, for years to come.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Masha Gessen. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an author of 11 books, including The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the National Book Award in 2017. Gessen has long paid careful attention to the retreat of democracy, and the rise of autocratic leaders around the world, especially Russian President, Vladimir Putin. We discuss the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the similarity and differences between Donald Trump and Putin, and how Gessen felt the calling of journalism from the tender age of four years old. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Now let’s get to your questions.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in an email from Sebastian who asks, “What do you make of the new batch of subpoenas issued by the January 6 committee? Does this mean they’re closing in on Trump’s inner circle? So I think, Sebastian, you’re referring to what happened in the last couple of days, when the very aggressive, very hardworking January 6 select committee, issued subpoenas to a new batch of four witnesses, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Boris Epshteyn. What do they have in common? Well, they were all advisors to the former president of the United States. And what else, they’re all lawyers, at least at the moment. Two of those four lawyers have been sanctioned. Rudy Giuliani, you may remember, has had his license suspended in two jurisdictions. And Sidney Powell, of Kraken fame, has been sanctioned by a district court judge in the Eastern district of Michigan. And remains to be seen what happens to the other lawyers.

Preet Bharara:

What’s interesting about this batch of subpoenas, is that the committee continues to show that it does not view January 6th, that day, those few hours of the actual violent insurrection, as a standalone event. They think about the lead up to January 6th, as being equally important. That the perpetration and perpetuation of the big lie, is part of the story and part of what needs to be revealed and exposed to the American people. The committee’s also fairly specific in explaining why they want information from these particular lawyers. They have background information on what their participation was in perpetuating the big lie, and they want to get to the bottom of it even more.

Preet Bharara:

For example, in the letter to Jenna Ellis, they’re very clear as to what they think her relevance is. For example, the committee writes, “Between mid-November, 2020 and January 6th, 2021, you actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of former President Trump, and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results.” That’s true of the other folks as well. And in particular with respect to Miss Ellis, the committee says, “According to public reporting, you prepared and circulated two memos, purporting to analyze the constitutional authority for the vice president to reject or delay counting electoral votes from States that had submitted alternate slates of electors.”

Preet Bharara:

So she is among of the group of people, like John Eastman and others, who were trying to get Vice President Pence, whom some of the insurrectionists wanted to hang and kill, to get him to do something that the law prohibited, that the Constitution prohibited, and then even former Vice President Dan Quayle, said was prohibited. Now because they’re lawyers, will they assert attorney client privilege and some other claims as to why they can’t be questioned? Of course, I don’t know that we’ll get testimony from any of these people any time soon.

Preet Bharara:

And when I first saw the news in the last couple of days, I thought I would be saying to you all, Good luck. You’re never going to hear from any of them. Part of that is because the committee, as many of you have frustratingly pointed out, doesn’t have a lot of enforcement mechanism. It’s one thing to refer Steve Bannon to the justice department for contempt of congress for defining a subpoena. It’s a little bit of a different thing to refer lawyers for the former president to the justice department. But as I record this on Wednesday morning, January 19th, there’s a little bit of news that has come across the [inaudible 00:04:28], and that is that the Kraken lawyer, Sidney Powell, has apparently said in his statement through her attorney, that she will appear before the one 6 committee and answer questions. Her attorney also says, “Powell still believes there was election fraud.” Well, she was never able to prove any of that in court. So, stay tuned.

Preet Bharara:

I also got questions about another case, in which news was broken in the minutes leading up to midnight this past Tuesday. This is an email from Ava who asks, “Okay, Preet. How significant is New York AG James’ court filing? Does she have the goods on the Trump organization?” Of course, that’s referring to the ongoing civil, not criminal, but civil investigation being conducted by New York Attorney General Tish James, of the Trump organization, centering on essentially, whether or not the Trump organization distorted the valuation of various assets, particularly the real estate assets, and in particular, whether those assets were inflated to benefit the Trump organization. Inflated to lenders, inflated to insurers, and on at least two occasions, if not more, as Tish James’ court papers point out, inflated to the IRS. The theory being, inflation of assets that weren’t really worth was being represented would help Donald Trump with his taxes, to get loans and other benefits that he otherwise wasn’t entitled to.

Preet Bharara:

What’s odd about the filing is first of all, it came minutes before the deadline. Second, it’s not part of a substantive actual lawsuit or complaint by Tish James. That hasn’t happened yet. Instead, it’s part of a procedural fight in which James has issued subpoenas, to members of the Trump family who work in the Trump organization, in response to which the Trump organization and family members, have filed a lawsuit to block compliance with the subpoenas. And so, this is the latest salvo from Attorney General, James, who not only argues that there’s no basis for defiance of the subpoena, but goes into great concrete, specific details, on what her investigation is apparently uncovered, with respect to the inflation of assets. The papers specifically talk about misstated size of mansions, how many buildings could fit in the property, the differential between what some lenders thought a property was worth, and what the representations were made with respect to what that property was worth. In one or more instances, the differential being hundreds of millions of dollars.

Preet Bharara:

Now, as to your question, does she have the goods on the Trump organization? Well, that’s far from known. There’s not been a lawsuit filed yet. No complaint filed yet by the attorney general. This is just skirmishing about process and about the subpoenas, and we don’t know what the particular defenses will be. Some of these things are not as clear as they might seem. In some cases, the valuations that were represented to banks and lenders and others, may have had caveats. In some cases, those are subjective valuations. In other cases, the people who the representations were being made to, could be alleged to themselves have been sophisticated valuers of property, incapable of being fooled, whether that works or not will remain to be seen.

Preet Bharara:

Another issue will be whether there was reliance on the part of particular individual Trump folks, on accountants and other financial experts. What was the extent of their knowledge or their intent in the false valuations, even if they were indeed found to be false. So there’s a lot going on here. There’s a lot of skirmishing still to happen. I think the bottom line is, there’s really no basis in connection with an investigation of non-presidential office matters, to defy the subpoenas. They’ll be ordered to provide documents. They’ll be ordered to provide testimony, like one of the brothers, Eric Trump, has already done, although he invoked the fifth amendment a number of times. Tish James’ lawyers will get the documents that they seek, I expect. And then once again, as with a lot of other matters that are pending that you guys keep asking about, will there be a lawsuit, will there be a verdict? Stay tuned.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this.

Preet Bharara:

Journalist and author, Masha Gessen, has become an authoritative voice on post-Soviet Russia, from its promise as an aspiring democracy in the 1990s, to its current day as an autocratic nation, wrestling to regain influence throughout Eastern Europe. Masha Gessen, thanks for joining the show.

Masha Gessen:

Thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a pleasure to have you, long overdue. All of us here are fans of your work. We were talking for a moment before we hit the record button, about what work is like. And I asked you how life was at the New Yorker, and you said, Well, it’s odd. Because there was a point where you went back to the office for a day, and then everyone had to go home again. How are you dealing with doing your work without going to the office?

Masha Gessen:

It’s the strangest thing because I never actually went to the office in the before times, but I realized that I always had a sense of being in communication with a kind of living organism. I had a clear visual image of people running around between offices, and discussing who was on the schedule to do what, and whether one pitch was going to conflict with another pitch. And somehow that was important to me, obviously not just as an image, but I had a sense of being like a remote part of a unitary organism. And I think that sort of thing, it’s much harder to put a finger on, than just this many people in a physical space doing very specific things. But it disintegrates over time and you stop having an ongoing living conversation. So that’s sad.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think it’s hardest for younger folks who were just coming into the organization?

Masha Gessen:

I can’t imagine that it’s good. Actually, I teach at Bard College, and I started there in fact during the pandemic, and I also taught a course last semester on writing about the pandemic. So I spent a lot of time in this very intense seminar, with a bunch of young people, trying to wrap our minds around what was different, what was particular, what was terrible about the pandemic. And mostly it was what was terrible, right, where we didn’t have a whole lot of wonderful stuff to report. But imagine the disorientation of a first-year student who arrives on campus, and is living in a dorm, is going to some classes in person, but has no topography of the campus, right? Like isn’t allowed to go to other dorms. The library is closed. You’re getting mostly carry out meals. And you get kind of a granular picture of how sort of the texture of life breaks down.

Masha Gessen:

And just the experience of being on campus, sort of during that period when everybody was supposed to wear masks at all times, and a lot of buildings were closed versus, for example, this past semester when people weren’t wearing masks outside, and when buildings were open. And I can’t say what it was in particular, but it felt different. I felt like last fall, it was a ghost campus, and this past fall, it was a regular campus, even though everybody still went to class in masks. But there’s something about the way that people even move through a common space when they’re estranged from one another, that you feel in a visceral level, and it just awful.

Preet Bharara:

It’s also maybe a little bit where you think you are in the arc. And I felt that in the fall of 2021, people were making plans, people were setting up dinners, I went to conferences in person for the first time in a very long while, and people thought we had turned a corner. And then when omicron came and shut everything back down again, even though I think, smart people think that the end and moving to an endemic situation, is not still that far away, it felt a little bit of like defeat-

Masha Gessen:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

… in a return to something. The first time around everyone was scared, and had a certain feel to it. But this time around, having gone through it once and having seen sort of the light at the end of the tunnel, it just seemed disheartening.

Masha Gessen:

I think it’s that and I think it’s one other thing. So I mean, that thing that you’re describing, I actually experienced it really strongly when I got a breakthrough infection a month after being vaccinated. So I was on the early side of being vaccinated, because I teach in person. And then in more March, 2021, I got a breakthrough infection that was pretty bad. And it really felt like I was at the end of a horror movie, and the monster had grabbed me by the ankle. But I think that I’ve traveled fair amounts starting last summer. One of my pandemic resolutions has been, I’m never turning down another offer to travel again. I used to be very spoiled about it. I used to be very picky. Now, whenever I’m invited to be somewhere in person, I don’t care how long the flight is, I’m going to do it, because I may not get another chance.

Preet Bharara:

You have a new appreciation for going to other places.

Masha Gessen:

I have a new appreciation just from moving through space. I didn’t realize just how important it was. Even if I used to think, Oh, what’s a two day trip to Paris, I’m only going to be inside my hotel. But no, I’ll be on a different sidewalk and it matters.

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Masha Gessen:

But what I realize is that other countries, with the possible exception of Russia, that I’ve been to, feel very different, because there’s a kind of anchoring policy, there’s a sense of authoritative knowledge about the pandemic. And so even if it seems sometimes a little random, like the German government saying, You can only socialize with two people from different households at a time, except for Christmas, when you can have five people over for dinner. I may be making up the five number, but there is this special sort of dispensation for Christmas, but everybody’s on the same page.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned Russia. That’s a good segue, to talk about the place you were born.

Masha Gessen:

Somehow it always Just comes up in conversation, if you talk to me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

With you, yes, of course. You were born in the Soviet Union, you lived there, I believe until 1981. Your memories of childhood and growing up in the Soviet Union, mostly fond or otherwise?

Masha Gessen:

Mostly fond or mostly fog?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Mostly fond or mostly whatever the opposite of fond is?

Masha Gessen:

Both. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Partly the pandemic has really forced me to think about exile and home and community, in ways that I hadn’t thought about this hard, at least since I was a teenager. So my story is a little weird. I did live in the Soviet Union until I was 14. And then I came to the United States with my family. And then so I went to high school in the States. I became a journalist here, and then the Soviet Union started falling apart. And I went back in 1991 and stayed basically for 22 years. So I lived in Russia for most of my life. And I had to leave again in 2013, because of the government’s Anti-Gay campaign, and my family specifically being targeted. So I’m like a double exile, once repatriate-

Preet Bharara:

Well, remind folks who may not be aware, the first time your family left the Soviet Union was why?

Masha Gessen:

… So the first time we left the Soviet Union, because of state enforced antisemitic policies, my family’s ethnically Jewish, which mattered in the Soviet Union, and among other things, it was very difficult to gain admission to university, and there was a lot of job discrimination. And the flip side of that, was that thanks to a huge international campaign, there was a period of some years when Jews could leave the Soviet Union, unlike other ethnic groups that were discriminated against. Jews were not uniquely oppressed in the Soviet Union, certainly not more oppressed than say Chechen’s, but we had this incredible opportunity to leave. And my parents really did see it as an opportunity, and as an opportunity for themselves, but more for their kids to get an education, and to grow up without that kind of systemic discrimination.

Preet Bharara:

So, at 14, fairly young teenager, were you excited at the prospect of leaving-

Masha Gessen:

No.

Preet Bharara:

… Were you nervous? Were you deeply unhappy? What were your thoughts as a teenager?

Masha Gessen:

I was deeply unhappy. Well, first of all, it took about three years to get out, because it was a fairly involved, bureaucratic process. And then there was just a very long waiting period, for some people it was shorter, in our case it was pretty long. So I was in limbo from the time I was 11 until I was 14. So all the sort of things that happened for kids at that age, the kind of identity forming things, for me were provisional. I always knew that whoever I was meeting, whoever I was making friends with, whatever I was starting to like, a place or an activity, I might be doing for the first and last time.

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Masha Gessen:

I don’t think that this is good for children or teenagers or … I think it was a pretty traumatic experience-

Preet Bharara:

Well, years later and looking back, do you still believe that to be so, or do you think it strengthened you in some way?

Masha Gessen:

… If you survive immigration-

Preet Bharara:

That’s what they say. That’s what they say.

Masha Gessen:

… Yeah. Obviously it made me probably a better writer and a better observer of things, but I think it’s a terrible thing to do to a kid. And then of course I went and did it to my kids.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Did you think about that at the time?

Masha Gessen:

Oh yeah. Yeah. And I still think about it. And I mean, my daughter just went back to visit for the first time this past summer. She could only go back to visit this past summer, because she couldn’t go back in until she was 18, and then COVID started. And so she went back, and she experienced something very similar to what I experienced when I first went back, which is at once a sense of home. And just realizing how much you have been robbed of by living in exile, but also a sense that it’s not possible to go back really, because living elsewhere has changed you.

Preet Bharara:

I believe you have said that you had a sort of galvanizing moment, in terms of seeing activism and journalism as a calling for you, at the very old age of four. Can you explain that?

Masha Gessen:

You’ve really done your homework, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

I have a great team.

Masha Gessen:

Yeah. So when I was four, the neighbor rang the doorbell and I opened the door, and she wanted to talk to my parents. And I said, My parents are busy, they’re typing Solzhenitsyn. And the way it worked was that … and actually a friend of mine recently said, The dissidents invented the original social network, the original system of sharing and liking. When you got something in the underground distribution system, the Samizdat, you A, passed it on, if it was a printed book that had been smuggled in from abroad, or if it was a typewritten manuscript, you would retype it. And you’d usually make four copies, because a Soviet typewriter, if you were lucky enough to have one, had keystrokes that were strong enough to create four copies of something, using carbon paper.

Masha Gessen:

So you could make four copies of something, and then join the distribution network by passing those copies around. And you got to keep one, and also return the one that you had borrowed, and passed three more onto other people. And so that’s what my parents were doing. They were typing Solzhenitsyn, and I knew it was very important that they couldn’t be interrupted. But then once I said it, there was just this flurry of door shutting and me getting picked up and transported to another room. And I don’t know what, but I just knew that I’d said something earth shattering, and that scene stayed with me.

Preet Bharara:

And so you became a journalist on the spot.

Masha Gessen:

I became a journalist on the spot. I’m not sure. I don’t know, Preen. I mean, that might be a little anachronistic, I don’t know if I could verbalize it at the time.

Preet Bharara:

I like that. It’s a good arc. I think it’s a very good arc. Speaking of arcs, you have talked about obviously the former Soviet Union, what’s been going on in Russia over the last number of years. And one thing you have said about sort of the further dissent into autocracy in Russia, you said not too long ago, “Russia never fully made the choice to break with its past. There was never an investigation and reckoning with state terror. People who were engaged in state terror were never officially disavowed. They were even allowed to continue to serve in high state offices,” et cetera, et cetera. And you also say, “Essentially the same people who are running the Soviet Union, are running what we refer to as post-Soviet Russia.” You mean literally the same people or the people with the same mindset? And if you mean literally the same people, bureaucrats, what if anything happens when they all die out and what happens when Putin dies?

Masha Gessen:

Well, that’s an easy question to answer. I have no idea.

Preet Bharara:

It’s always a great answer. It’s my go-to.

Masha Gessen:

Right. But I mean, it is a good question. Is it literally the same people and what happens when they die out? So, in my book, The Future is History, I took sort of a deep dive into a fascinating longitudinal study, carried out by those great sociologists, Yurii Levada, who died a few years back, but whose students continued to carry out the study, and it’s the study of the homo sovieticus, the Soviet person, right. He had a hypothesis back in the eighties, that there was a generation of people, who had been shaped by living through the great terror. and the great terror, depending on how you define it, never goes outside the bounds of 1953, which is when Stalin died, and the Soviet Union stopped randomly jailing and killing people, right. It continued to jail and sometimes kill dissidents, people who explicitly broke with the regime, but it stopped accusing random people of being enemies of the state, and putting them in jail or executing them for it.

Masha Gessen:

So it stopped engaging in terror, right. Terror is random as opposed to just political persecution. So Levada had this theory that once the generation of people who had been shaped by terror, died out, Soviet institutions which rested on this self enforced obedience of people who were shaped by terror, Soviet institutions would crumble. And so he did this huge study, when he got the money from the [inaudible 00:24:35] of government in the late 1980s, he did this huge study and his hypothesis seemed to be confirmed. All the traits that they assigned to this state of having growing up under terror, seemed to be generationally bound. So they made this prediction that the Soviet Union was on its last legs. And sure enough, two years later, the Soviet Union appears to collapse right on schedule.

Masha Gessen:

But then they continued doing the same survey in 1994, 1999, and every five years since. And what they see is a weird kind of reversion to this set of totalitarian adaptations, that it may be generationally bound, but it seems to stick in the slightly older generation. And that every event, whether it’s a traumatic event or triumphant, and like the annexation of Crimea, which was for Russia’s sort of triumph, every event seems to bring back more of those adaptations, and more of those traits in individuals and in society as a whole. And so what we’re watching, is this perpetuation of the totalitarian experiment, that almost looks endless. And I don’t want to say that it’s impossible to break with it, but I think that what we would have to see is an actual break, right, an actual reckoning, an actual disavowal. And that’s something that didn’t happen in the early nineties, and seems less and less likely to happen as time goes on.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I was going to say, the prospect for that was not terrific some years ago, but it was [inaudible 00:26:25] there, and what’s the prospect for that now, and as you just said, very little.

Masha Gessen:

Very little, and in fact what we’re seeing the Putin government do, is the exact opposite. They’re right now in the process of shutting down Memorial, which is an organization founded to document and memorialize [inaudible 00:26:43] terror, with the very explicit goal of sort of carrying out this reckoning, so that the country can come to terms with it and put it behind it. And the Putin government has come to the point, has evolved to the point, where it sees that as basically seditious activity.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think Putin in some ways sees his own mortality, and is trying to accelerate his goals, accelerate autocracy, or does he not think that way?

Masha Gessen:

That’s a great question. I mean, Putin like Stalin before him, seems to act like a man who believes himself to be immortal, right, there’s no succession plan-

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Masha Gessen:

… sometimes people read the tea leaves and say, Oh, he seems to be preparing for a transition. I don’t actually buy that idea. But also every time something happens in the post-Soviet space, I think Putin sees more and more evidence that he can’t possibly loosen his grip on power, because bad things will happen. Look at Belarus, look at Ukraine, look at Kazakhstan. So he just continues to grip tighter and tighter and tighter. And that’s part of what accounts for the intensifying crackdown.

Preet Bharara:

You said something a couple years ago, which I find very interesting. People always want to compare, I’ve asked this question before of other guests, compare Trump and Putin talk about their relationship. And somebody asked you, who’s worse Putin or Trump? Which is, I guess, a bit of an unfair question. But you answered it by saying, “In a way, I think Trump is worse.”

Preet Bharara:

And you go on to say about Putin, and I was just reminded of it when you were speaking about him a second ago, you say, “Putin has an idea. It is self-aggrandizing and absurd on the face of it. That if he stepped away, Russia would fall apart. And so he has to carry this burden. And for his labors, he deserves to have the yachts and the palaces and all that, but he is doing it for his country.” And then you say, and this is the striking part, “Trump doesn’t even have that delusion. It’s all power and money in their purest form. And you could dig as deep as you want. You would never find a shred of responsibility.” You said that, I think, 18 months ago. Do you still believe that to be true?

Masha Gessen:

I do believe that to be true. I think that Putin, as every myth maker and that really includes most of us, comes to believe his own myth. And I think at this point, this myth having been maintained for 22 years, is a very heavy one. I think he feels like Russia is his cross to bear. And yes, he deserves a lot of wealth and a lot of luxury, and a lot of-

Preet Bharara:

He’s earned his treasure, because he’s a Patriot.

Masha Gessen:

… Exactly. Exactly. And maybe because he’s worked so hard, right. Whereas I think Trump, and he continues to find ways to communicate this to us, even from his current state, wherever that is, it just is pure entitlement without any a sense of responsibility, burden, history, whatever you might want to look for.

Preet Bharara:

Another way of thinking about that is, in your mind, I think you’re saying, Putin is not quite the narcissist that Trump is, although he’s obviously a narcissist.

Masha Gessen:

I don’t know. I mean, is it less narcissistic to think that you are an empty bubble deserving of money, or is it more narcissistic to think that you are a great man of history?

Preet Bharara:

Maybe we leave that to the experts on psychology.

Masha Gessen:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

We can talk about it, a very sort of fraught moment, instead of taking a step back, let’s take a step to the present. And we’re recording this on Tuesday afternoon, January 18th, and there’s a lot of concern about escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine. I don’t know how much all the listeners have been following it. How would you describe the gravity of the moment, with respect to Russia and Ukraine? What’s at stake?

Masha Gessen:

Well, what’s at stake? Ukraine is a country of about 50 million people, which I think gets kind of lost in the conversation. I mean, not that it would matter matter any less, if it were a country of 3 million people, but this is a large European country, that is staring down the barrel of a gun. And the world’s biggest players, the United States and Russia, or Russia and NATO, are talking about it as though it were contest between them. And as though this country, these people, who have been through actually, an ongoing 31-year struggle to forge a new society in the rubble of the Soviet Union, as though they were just potential collateral damage in the contest of the great powers.

Preet Bharara:

And so how should they be talking about it?

Masha Gessen:

How should they be talking? We should talk talking about Ukraine. We should be talking about the people in Ukraine. I mean, I have to admit, as a young journalist, like a lot of people especially who worked on that part of the world, I did a number of years as a worker respondent, and I developed this unhealthy obsession with the moment the war starts. Like how do you know? We don’t live in a world where one country declares war in another. In fact, we have for many years been living in a world, where countries mostly claim not to be at war, when they are in fact demonstrably at war. So if you’re there, if you’re inside, how do you know? How do you know that a war is starting?

Masha Gessen:

And I mean, in this chasing this story that I was determined to write, I remember going to Kosovo in March of 1998, and just finding that to be the most awful experience. Because a whole bunch of us foreign correspondents, had descended on Pristina, taken over this hotel, in a way that we’re all accustomed to doing from years of writing about the Balkans, and we knew what was happening, but the people who lived there, had less of a frame of reference. They hadn’t seen a war before, we had.

Masha Gessen:

I mean, that’s not the case for Ukraine. Ukrainians saw war just a few years ago, and in fact, have had this ongoing conflict in the east of the country. But there’s just something awful about that dread and that sense of powerlessness, and knowing that your life is being taken away from you, in ways you can’t predict, and you won’t probably be able to account for, for years to come. But you know you are on the verge of catastrophe, and that there’s nothing you can do about it. And that just makes my heart sink. And I wish we were talking about that.

Preet Bharara:

No, we should. But there are people in the US, who observe the Biden presidency, and they think that this is also important as a symbol of American power, and whether or not NATO is relevant, and the power of NATO and the Western democracies who comprise it. Let me ask you this question for a moment, what’s Putin’s motivation? What is he after here?

Masha Gessen:

I think it’s a few things. One, and this is most obvious and almost explicit, he wants to be recognized as an equal player to Biden. He wants Russia to always be consulted. And he wants a return of the bipolar world. So he’s willing to do almost anything to make that happen. I’d say his second level motivation, is domestic. He is oddly concerned, perennially with his popularity. And he has vast infrastructure of measured takers, who track his popularity, and which is hard in the non-democracy. How do you know actually what people think?

Preet Bharara:

Because you would think that a guy like Putin, who does a lot of fake things, and he scores 93 goals in his exhibition hockey games. It’s interesting to note that he does care about the truth of his popularity, as opposed to a false projection of power and strength and popularity. Is that interesting or not?

Masha Gessen:

I think it’s fascinating. And it’s also fascinating that it’s a self-defeating undertaking, because a guy who destroys truth on an ongoing basis-

Preet Bharara:

Still wants to know what it is.

Masha Gessen:

… Right. Right. Right. But it’s like he makes it harder and harder to find out what it is, and he still wants to know what it’s. So it’s a completely doomed quest and a true philosophical conundrum, but for what it’s worth, the measures that he’s getting, are pretty sad. And the last time that he was able to secure a huge boost in popularity, that lasted quite a long time, was when Russia annexed Crimea. And so there’s a very simple way of thinking about it. Let’s just reprise that, let’s give the people a military triumph that will make them feel like they belong to a great empire. And Ukraine is an obvious target.

Masha Gessen:

And I think the third level of motivation, is a more and more palpable sense that Russia is a truncated empire, that needs to reestablish its old imperial borders. Those are not necessarily the borders of the Soviet Union, right. I mean, Russia was an expanding empire for centuries before the Soviet Union. Right. And then it would shrink a little bit, and then it would expand again. So I wouldn’t look at the borders of the Soviet Union before 1991, as the exact guide to what Russia is planning to do. But there is a sense, and we’re hearing that fairly explicitly from the foreign ministry, at least in Russian, that all of the former Soviet Republics are [inaudible 00:37:30] and that Moscow does see them, and Putin does see them as his domain.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Masha Gessen, after this. Do you think that the warnings that are being issued by Biden, where he says, We will act decisively, and others in the west are saying, It’ll be a high price to pay. Do you think those warnings are meaningful, empty or in between?

Masha Gessen:

I think they’re meaningful. I think they are heard by Moscow. I think there’s also a kind of dead-end logic to them. And we don’t tend to think highly of individuals, who try the same thing over and over, expecting different results. But somehow, we allow our governments to do that. The United States has been imposing sanctions on Russia for the better part of Putin’s presidency. And it has never had an impact, or at least an impact that we can observe, on the way that Putin has acted. In fact, if anything, it has at times helped him in consolidate power.

Masha Gessen:

Now that is not my argument against sanctions. It’s my argument against thinking about sanctions, as an instrument of influencing Putin, because it is very clear that such an instrument doesn’t exist. So if such an instrument doesn’t exist, what else can the United States do? If it’s going to impose sanctions, then there has to be a different rationale for imposing sanctions. For example, we don’t do business with rogue states that violate international borders and kill and imprison their own citizens. That’s a pretty good reason for imposing sanctions. But then you don’t measure their success by seeing whether they influence Putin’s behavior, because they won’t.

Preet Bharara:

Right. It’s a more on political stand-

Masha Gessen:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

… that doesn’t necessarily have a [inaudible 00:39:39]. So if they’re not impactful, why is Putin listening? Why is Moscow listening carefully, as you suggested?

Masha Gessen:

Well, they need to prepare for the sanctions, both economically and rhetorically, right. I mean, they’re doing their math. They do appear to be preparing for war. I mean, at this point, we’re recording this on a Tuesday, it’s going to be released on Thursday. I’m assuming we’re still going to be in a state of anticipating strikes, but I’m not actually sure. Russia has begun pulling its diplomats out of Ukraine. I mean, knowing Putin, there’s likely to be a kind of lull for a few weeks, so that he still strikes in an unexpected manner, he likes to do that, that’s one of his clear psychological ticks.

Masha Gessen:

But there’s very little indication that this war or the escalation of this war can be averted. But they’re listening to know what they have to do, A, to repair or back up supply chains in case of sanctions, but also what they have to tell their people, to make them feel more sort of mobilized in the face of sanctions. Like, you can’t have iPhones anymore, because the Americans are so terrible, is a better rhetorical move than you can’t have iPhones anymore, because we went to war on Ukraine. So they have to prepare for that.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Right. I wanted to talk about the state of democracy in America. One of the things I do in the podcast, is I answer listeners questions. And I got a question that I thought would be perfect to ask you, and get me off the hook. It comes from a Twitter user, which I think is Jackal With Style, who asked a very simple, narrow concrete question, Masha. And it is this, “Is America in a state of decline as a leader in the free world, and as an example of democratic values?”

Masha Gessen:

Oh my God, where do I begin?

Preet Bharara:

Be thorough and yet short.

Masha Gessen:

People who know me, know that I like to take issue with the premise of the question. So there’s nothing in that question that I wouldn’t take issue with. The idea of a free world, the idea of a leader of a free world, the idea that the United States is the leader of the free world-

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Masha Gessen:

… and an exemplar, oh my God, of democratic values. Like all of those things are things that I have huge issues with.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Well, we can strip it out and say that, “Whatever you thought-

Masha Gessen:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

… America has been, in whatever state of imperfection as a leader or a want to be leader or anything else, is it in a state of decline from what it was ”

Masha Gessen:

Yes. Thank you for helping me with that. Yes. I think whatever it is you thought it was, it is in a state of decline, partly as a result of the Trump presidency, which was just one ongoing teenage rebellion against every international institution. And I think that we tend to forget just how much of that happened. In part, because we weren’t paying that much attention. In part, because living in a state of instability and this autocratic assault that we lived in for four years, made us even more provincial, us [inaudible 00:43:14] I mean Americans, made us even more provincial than we were to start with, which was pretty provincial, right.

Masha Gessen:

So we’re looking inward and somehow expecting the world to be paying attention, when there was actually an incredible amount that the Trump administration did, to cut the United States off from the world. And I’m not sure that the Biden administration stepping back in, has been tremendously effective. And certainly this standoff with Russia over Ukraine, and again registering my objection against thinking of Ukraine in that way as a pawn in this standoff, but in some ways it is. In some ways, this is this the biggest test to date of the United States in the world. And I don’t know that there’s a path to leadership in this particular tragic situation.

Preet Bharara:

You’re saying you’re pretty pessimistic.

Masha Gessen:

I am really pessimistic.

Preet Bharara:

In some ways you have said, that the United States was not ready for Trump. And I think you also make the point that most people make, I think, that Trump is a result of what was going on in America. How can both of those things be true at the same time?

Masha Gessen:

Well, a lot of the time in the world and in life, you have to have two thoughts at the same time. And I think that in particular with Trump, the two thoughts that you really have to hold at the same time, are two thoughts that are sometimes, I think, unreasonably posed in opposition, which is, Trump is an exceptional situation, an anomaly in American politics, and Trump is a continuity of Republican Party politics and American politics, more broadly of the last 20 years. And I think both of those things are true, right. The United States had never had a president like Trump. If we’re lucky, we’ll never have a president quite like Trump.

Preet Bharara:

We could have, in fact, Trump, again.

Masha Gessen:

We could have in fact Trump, again. So I mean, he is exceptional, right. And even if a Trumpist president follows him, if it’s not Trump himself, if it’s Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene or pick the nightmare scenario of your choice, it will be different. And yet I think that both sort of the national politics of us against the world, that followed 911, and the anti-democratic minoritarian politics of the Republican Party of the last decade, played a huge role in creating Trump, of creating the possibility of Trump, and in that way, he’s completely a continuity.

Preet Bharara:

There’s something that I have a hard time figuring out how to think about in America. You have said, from time to time, commented on what you refer to as, “The rush to relegate to memory, something that is still happening.” And I find that to be true, that we have a let’s move on culture. You see it with respect to January 6th, there are many, many people, including by the way, some people who don’t like what happened on January 6th, who might say, It’s being divisive of to dwell on it, Not sure that some people should be charged with crimes in connection with it. I don’t know if this is unique to the United States or not, a rush to move on, go to the next thing. And I understand the downside of that. It can cause you to regress and go back to the bad thing that you’re trying to get behind, without having reconciliation and confrontation. Is there anything good about the American, sort of proclivity, to want to move on quickly?

Masha Gessen:

Of course. I mean, I think, that there’s something beautiful about the the sort of future oriented ethos, that’s so fundamental to American political culture. I mean, I really, really don’t believe in universal recipes for anything.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Masha Gessen:

And I think that when I’ve talked about this tendency to move on to sweep things under the rug, it’s like I don’t think that the universal recipe for political success, is pausing and processing everything that happens in a country, until it is done with and consensus has been reached. That is no more a universal recipe, than the recipe of just putting things behind us and moving on. What I think we have to do, and again you would expect that of an individual, to be cognizant of the pitfalls inherent in whatever your dominant strategy is, right. And if our dominant strategy is to put things behind us, and move on toward an ever brighter future, the obvious pitfalls of that, is that we may not notice that it’s still happening. We may not deal with the underlying things that brought it about, and it may happen again and be worse.

Preet Bharara:

Right. I mean, it’s like getting a diagnosis from a doctor. You get past the initial bout of disease, whether it’s cancer or something else, and then say, I’m never going to the doctor again, I’m going to forget about it and move on-

Masha Gessen:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

… when these things can reemerge and they do, in people and embodies politic as well.

Masha Gessen:

But I think it’s like, it’s getting a diagnosis from a doctor, going through your chemo being declared cancer-free and taking up smoking again.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, that seems more obvious. That seems less of a conundrum.

Masha Gessen:

Okay. Good point. Yeah. Let’s stick with your [inaudible 00:49:02].

Preet Bharara:

There’s this other thing that bothers me, you may have seen there’s a … and I haven’t looked into it very closely, I keep meaning to … I think it was a study out of Princeton, and maybe people have already perceived this to be true, but their conclusions were very stark. And it’s the conclusion that the popularity of a particular policy or proposal in America, has virtually zero effect and impact on that policy being implemented, adopted or enacted. Is that the very definition of broken democracy or not?

Masha Gessen:

I think that is the very definition of broken democracy. I mean, one symptom of this broken democracy or a component of broken democracy, is the way we cover it in the media, right. We have this alienated way of covering policy that focuses on, either the legislative mechanics, or there arcane points of actual policy, and almost never focuses on the impact of actual policies on people’s lives, which is what accounts for their being popular or not popular, right. So I think that the breakdown-

Preet Bharara:

I would dispute, I think it’s even worse than that. I think you’re lucky if you get them to even concentrate on the policy. I think most of the time they’re concentrating on who’s winning or losing, with respect to getting the policy passed or defeated. It’s more the sport.

Masha Gessen:

… Right. Absolutely. I mean, the sort of the top level of coverage, is always the horse race coverage, and then the wonky level of coverage, is the arcane details of the policy, which I would argue, is not much more useful. Possibly less useful, because it makes it seem like an abstraction, rather than something that actually has a direct impact on people’s lives. And I actually often think back to this incredible sense, during Peter Strzok [inaudible 00:51:06] in the Soviet Union, when suddenly for a short period of time, the papers were writing about things that were happening in the Kremlin, in ways that made it clear that they had an impact on people’s lives. And it was like watching a miracle, right. The media actually doing what we’re supposed to do, what we’re meant to do, and people consuming it and being informed. And I I haven’t seen anything like it, in many, many years, but certainly I think, in the US media, we just keep getting farther and farther away from it.

Preet Bharara:

You know that you’ve made this other criticism of journalism as well. You said once, “I have very little patience for the idea of objectivity. I have more patience for the idea that there’s an objective style, to serve the original concept of objectivity in journalism.” What do you mean by that?

Masha Gessen:

So the concept of objectivity in journalism goes back to the 1930s, when group of wonderful thinkers and writers in the United States, decided to address themselves to what they perceived as a crisis in the media, of too much opinion and not enough tangible fact. And they thought that journalism should be more like science, where every story is like an experiment. And the criteria and you apply to it, is whether it’s transparent and replicable. So that’s where we get the objective style. That’s where we get the journalist’ saying, This is everyone I talk to. These are the questions I asked. And the concede is, if you went to these same people under the same circumstances and asked them the same questions, you’d get the same result. That is not actually true, but I think that’s kind of a beautiful idea, right a beautiful abstraction to aspire to.

Masha Gessen:

Somehow over nearly a hundred years, this has devolved into this bothsidesism, which deposits the entirely fake premise that there are two sides to every story, only two sides, and that they’re equally distant from the objective facts. And all you have to do is get an equal number of opinions or views from one side, and the other side, and then you’re done with your story. And that’s sort of the devolution of the idea of objectivity. And what I mean by the objective style, is that the style of transparency, the style that aims for replicability, the style that tells you exactly how the journalists got the information, and who they got it from, that’s something that’s actually very, very useful. But objectivity is the idea that we don’t know the truth, but we have to represent two different views of it, I have no use for.

Preet Bharara:

Going back to one of the reasons you left, or maybe the principle reason your family left the Soviet Union, were systems of antisemitism set up. Do you think that in the United States, we address and call out antisemitism sufficiently? Let the record reflect that there was a heavy sigh

Masha Gessen:

There’s a heavy sigh, because I have a real problem with that question. Let me try to press it out.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Masha Gessen:

I mean, maybe I just have a problem with it, because I live in New York City. And it’s on the one hand, of course, antisemitism is real, and even living in New York City, I occasionally see evidence that it is real. I see antisemitic rhetoric taking a greater and greater hold on the Trumpist right. Certainly the acts of terror we have seen at Jewish places of worship, have appeared to have increased in the last few years, and are absolutely terrifying, and terrifying in a visceral way, like other things don’t. I also have a very difficult time in this country calling out instances of antisemitism, without putting them in the larger context of white supremacy.

Masha Gessen:

I think that to the extent that antisemitism plays and works to a particular audience in this country, it is part and parcel of a culture in politics of white supremacy, and it has to be seen in that context. Otherwise singling it out and calling it out, may actually serve to obscure our view of the much larger structural forces of racism and white supremacy-

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Masha Gessen:

… that are operating politics.

Preet Bharara:

So let me change the question. Then the better question for these purposes is, and I think I know the answer that you’re going to give, do we in this country sufficiently identify, call out and condemn white supremacy? This is great, I get to revise my questions with you on a real-time basis.

Masha Gessen:

And bigger and better size. I think it’s an ongoing and fraught process. And I think that some of the ways in which it’s proceeding, is a really project, right. I mean, in some ways we’ve had these extraordinary cultural breakthroughs, like The 1619 Project, right. Which even for the amount of vitriol it has aroused on the Trumpian right, that has served to make it more part of the vernacular and an unforgettable, unignorable part of American culture. It also backfires obviously, because so many people who talk about it, never read it and don’t understand what it says. Which is an obvious problem with the whole fake debate about critical race theory.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Masha Gessen:

So the answer is yes and no, and it’s complicated and bad. How’s that?

Preet Bharara:

Right. I’ll take it. It’s a long form podcast, but it’s not forever. About a year and a half ago, you talked about the matter of your own self-presentation, and you posted a tweet that said, “I avoided the topic of pronouns for a while, but when my new book was coming out, it seemed I had to make a decision about self-presentation. I am trans non-binary, so I asked to be referred to as, they. It’s been an instructive few weeks.” How instructive were those weeks? What happened?

Masha Gessen:

It was kind of a funny experiment, because I’m actually fairly agnostic on the subject of pronouns. And for a while, my signature on my college email was they/he/she, so use what you want. But when I was doing publicity for my most recent book, Surviving Autocracy, I would ask journalists to use they/them as my preferred pronoun, sort of saying, I’m not precious about it, but use they/them. And I should also say, that the reason that I’m so sort of relaxed about it, is because I think partly because of being bilingual, I sort of very clearly perceived their [inaudible 00:58:42] of language. For example, there’s no they/them pronoun in Russian, and I have to gender myself in Russian all the time. And I mostly just go with the lifelong habit of gendering myself as female, because why not?

Masha Gessen:

But then I realized that when I wasn’t so strong about expressing a preference, journalists would just decide to gender me as female. And that I realized made me uncomfortable, because I was farming out this decision, then I was unreasonably upset that they made their own decision. So I decided to use they/them. And the reason that it made me uncomfortable in the end, was because I thought, Okay, look, I have the power to use my visibility and to use my opportunity to tell a journalist how to refer to me, on behalf of a lot of people who can’t. And so I should just use it, that’s not a place to [inaudible 00:59:41] responsibility. And it actually feels better when people refer to me in a more precise way. It does make me feel more seen, as hokey as that sounds.

Preet Bharara:

And have you found some people just refusing to do that?

Masha Gessen:

No, but I think I live in a charmed world of New York City media and Liberal Arts college.

Preet Bharara:

Masha Gessen, thanks so much for being on the show, it was a real treat.

Masha Gessen:

Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Masha Gessen continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

Preet Bharara:

I want to end the show this week with a little bit of personal news. You’ve heard me over the years talk about how inspired I am, by of the young people in this country and around the world, even very young people. I think it’s the case that we often underestimate young people, even children, who have an innate sense of fairness. Ever watch children play a game? They know who’s cheating and who’s not. And I think at a fairly young age, children can start to learn about justice and fairness, in a way that we don’t often think about. And so the news is, in response to prompting from my publisher, I’ve authored a picture book for children. It’s called Justice Is, and it addresses basic themes of justice that children can understand. It talks about how justice is important. How standing up for justice is difficult. It takes curiosity and questioning.

Preet Bharara:

To be clear, I did not draw the pictures. They’re beautifully rented by a master illustrator named, Sue Cornelison, who has won awards for her illustrations, and has done a number of books, including one called My Little Golden Book about Martin Luther King Jr. One of the purposes of the book, is to provide parents with the ability to begin to teach their kids, about some of the more heroic figures from history, who fought for justice and fought for fairness, from Lincoln to Gandhi, to Malala, to John Lewis.

Preet Bharara:

I’m donating all my income from the picture book to a great cause. It’s called the New York Legal Assistance Group or NYLAG. What do they do? Every day they fight for justice for adults and children in crisis. They impact the lives of 90,000 people each year, including tens of thousands of children, by providing free legal services to those who can’t afford an attorney. Because of the work that NYLAG does, among other things, families facing eviction can stay in their homes. Survivors struggling with intimate partner violence, can leave their abusers and build a safe life for their children. Children with disabilities can access the education to which they’re entitled, and they do a whole lot of other stuff too. If you’re interested in learning more about NYLAG or making your own contribution, go to nylag.org, that’s nylag.org. If you otherwise have young people in your life, and you’re interested in taking a look at the book, go to JusticeIsBook.com. Again, that’s JusticeIsBook.com.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Masha Gessen.

Preet Bharara:

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at (669) 247-7338, that’s (669) 24 Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director who’s David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh, and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew [Dost 01:04:09]. I’m your host, Preet Bharara, stay tuned.