Includes bibliographical references (pages 488-506) and index.

Part one. Born in the USSR -- Born in 1984 -- Life, examined -- Privilege -- Homo sovieticus -- Part two. Revolution -- Swan Lake -- The execution of the White House -- Everyone wants to be a millionaire -- Part three. Unraveling -- Grief, arrested -- Old songs -- It's all over all over again -- Part four. Resurrection -- Life after death -- The orange menace -- All in the family -- Part five. Protest -- The future is history -- Budushchego net -- White ribbons -- Masha: May 6, 20112 -- Part six. Crackdown -- Seryozha: July 18, 2013 -- Lyosha: June 11, 2013 -- A nation divided -- Zhanna: February 27, 2015 -- Forever war.

"Russian-American journalist, and biographer of Vladimir Putin, Masha Gessen reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia has surrendered to a virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Masha Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time. Masha Gessen is the author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Slate, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. A longtime resident of Moscow, she now lives in New York City"--Provided by publisher.