In The Future Is History, Gessen traces the rise of Russia’s mafia state through the follows the lives of  people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy.  The Soviet regime had fallen and they came of age with newfound aspirations  as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers,  and artists. Unfortunately, their hopes collided with the reemergence of the autocracy under Putin, and they now find themselves in a “landscape of endlessly shifting signposts”.  Although the focus is on critics of the new regime, Geseen also she gives at least equal time to the “the aggressively obedient majority”, whose deepest yearning was to ‘make their country great again.’