Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen at the 6 Moscow International Book Festival, 2011
Born	(1967-01-13) 13 January 1967 Moscow, Soviet Union
Residence	Moscow, Russia
Nationality	Russian, American
Occupation	Journalist, author

Maria Alexandrovna Gessen, better known as Masha Gessen (born 13 January 1967), is a Russian and United States journalist and author.

Biography

Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Moscow, in 1981 Gessen moved with her family to the United States, returning in 1991 to Moscow, where she lives now. She holds both Russian and US citizenship. Her brother is Keith Gessen.

She is an open lesbian and an activist for the rights of sexual minorities. The mass media mentioned her as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow LGBT human rights organization "Triangle" from 1993 to 1998.

Gessen has two children: a boy Vova and a girl Yolka; both are US citizens. The boy, born in 1997 in Russia, was adopted by her from an orphanage in Kaliningrad. The girl was born to her in the US in 2001. In 2004 she was married in the US to Svetlana Generalova, a Russian citizen who was also involved in the LGBT movement in Moscow.

Career

She has written on LGBT rights and Russian affairs. She writes in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate and Vanity Fair, and US News & World Report.

Her 2012 book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin is a political biography of Vladimir Putin, whom she describes as a dictator.

She was dismissed from her position as the chief editor of Russia's oldest magazine, Vokrug Sveta on 1 September 2012 after she refused to send a reporter to cover a Russian Geographic Society event featuring President Putin, claiming that it had become a mouthpiece of Putin's government.

In September 2012, Gessen was appointed as director of the Russian Service for Radio Liberty, a US government funded broadcaster based in Prague. Shortly after her appointment was announced and a few days after Gessen met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, more than 40 members of Radio Liberty's staff were fired. Radio Liberty also lost its Russian broadcasting license several weeks after Gessen took over. Gessen's role in both of these events is unclear but has caused controversy.

Her books

• Masha Gessen (1993). The Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men in the Russian Republic. International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Comm. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-884955-13-6. 
• Masha Gessen, ed. (1995). Half a Revolution: Contemporary Fiction by Russian Women. Cleis Press. p. 269. ISBN 978-1-57344-006-6. 
• Masha Gessen (1997). Dead Again: The Russian Intelligentsia after Communism. Verso. p. 211. ISBN 978-1-85984-147-1. 
• Masha Gessen (2004). Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace. Dial Press Trade Paperback. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-385-33605-5. 
• Masha Gessen (2008). Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-15-101362-3.  (a New York Times Notable Book of the year)
• Masha Gessen (2009). Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-15-101406-4.  (about Grigori Perelman)
• Masha Gessen (2012). The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Riverhead Hardcover. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-59448-842-9. 

Her articles

• "Vladimir Putin: The Grey Cardinal of Russia", Vanity Fair, October 2008.
• "The Wrath of Putin" re: Russian prime minister's relationship with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vanity Fair, April 2012.
• "A Call from the Kremlin" re: face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The New York Times, September 2012.

References

• Bloomsbury Books author pages
• Review of Blood Matters, The Independent

See also

• "Putin Biography Chronicles Rise Of A 'Street Thug'", interview with Dave Davies on Fresh Air, 1 March 2012.