Dictators fall when they're overconfident; they stay in power when they're paranoid.
Masha GessenRead
Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the pervasive state of acceptance and surrender among people living under oppressive regimes.
Masha Gessen's quote highlights how resignation became a fundamental aspect of daily life in the Soviet Union, where individuals often felt powerless against the overwhelming influence of the state. This sense of resignation can lead to a loss of hope and initiative, as people adjust their lives to endure rather than actively challenge the circumstances they face.
Themes
ResignationSovietLifeAcceptanceOppression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during discussions on the impact of oppressive governments on individual agency.
More from Masha Gessen
All quotes βWhen you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.
Masha GessenRead
There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as opposed to citizens. The more credible hypothesis, I think, is that there is a kind of trauma, a social trauma that is passed on from generation to generation.
Masha GessenRead
We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison.
Masha GessenRead
Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the early 1990s: being gay was no longer criminal or shameful, but it was still not a topic for polite conversation or public discussion.
Masha GessenRead
... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don't think it should exist.
Masha GessenRead
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Each one of us, as long as life stirs is us, may play a part in extricating ourselves from the power system by asserting our primacy as people in quiet acts of mental or physical withdrawal-in gestures of non-conformity, in abstentions, restrictions, inhibitions, which will liberate us from the domination of the pentagon of power.
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