It is so impossible to predict how much influence what you write will have, and what sorts of anxieties and imaginaries it will tap into.

It seems that probably Putin's father maintained some connection to the secret police throughout his life. One sign of that is that they had a telephone, and people didn't have telephones in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

The thing about the Russian secret police and the Soviet secret police is that one never leaves the secret police. Once a KGB man, always a KGB man.

Masha Gessen Quotes