# Masha Gessen **Masha Gessen** is a Russian-American journalist and author whose books on Putin and post-Soviet Russia are among the standard English-language accounts of [[Putinism]], and who has applied the same lens to Donald Trump. Gessen uses they/them pronouns. ## Work Gessen's books include *The Man Without a Face*, a biography of [[Vladimir Putin]], and *The Future Is History*, which won the 2017 National Book Award. They lived in Russia from 1991 to 2013, then left for the United States. Formerly a *New Yorker* staff writer, Gessen is now a *New York Times* columnist. ## Russian prosecution The charge stemmed from a September 2022 interview with YouTuber Yury Dud about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. Russia placed Gessen on its wanted list in December 2023 and ordered their arrest in absentia on December 26, 2023. On July 15, 2024 Moscow's Basmanny district court sentenced Gessen in absentia to eight years in prison, plus a four-year ban on administering websites, for spreading "fakes" about the Russian army. ## RWKB angle Gessen is a leading theorist of Putinism and of the resemblances between Putin's and Trump's styles of rule — and was personally targeted by Russia's wartime censorship law. ## See Also - [[Putinism]] - [[Anne Applebaum]] - [[Timothy Snyder]]