21 Keith Gessen Quotes for You to Enjoy

Keith Gessen

American Novelist

Born: Jan 9, 1975

American Life Made Mother Parents You

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

Being a Russian oligarch these days isn't easy. The best and brightest of them are in exile or in jail; others, after feasting on leverage during the commodities boom, now have tummies full of debt. Keith Gessen

Best Others Boom Easy Russian Days Exile Debt Commodities Jail Being After Them Full Now Brightest Leverage

The government, as a rule, discourages specialization: Military officers and diplomats are constantly transferred from one post to another, from one region to the next. Still, specialists do emerge. Keith Gessen

Government Post Military Rule Constantly Diplomats Emerge Another Still Officers Transferred Region Next Specialists Specialization

My parents were attached to Russian culture by a thousand ineradicable ties. But they did not cut me off from American society, nor could they have. I assimilated wholeheartedly, found my parents in many ways embarrassing, and allowed my Russian to decline through neglect. Keith Gessen

Me Culture Parents Society Neglect Ways Embarrassing Thousand Russian Attached Could Through Allowed Ties Were Nor Off American Did Decline Cut American Society Many Wholeheartedly Found Assimilated

My parents and my brother and I left the Soviet Union in 1981. I was six, and Dima was sixteen, and that made all the difference. I became an American, whereas Dima remained essentially Russian. Keith Gessen

Made Parents All The Difference Brother Russian Remained Became Left American Soviet Soviet Union Six Essentially Sixteen Difference Whereas Union

Baba Seva - Seva Efraimovna Gekhtman - was born in a small town in Ukraine in 1919. Her father was an accountant at a textile factory, and her mother was a nurse. Her parents moved to Moscow with her and her brothers when she was a child. Keith Gessen

Mother Father Parents Nurse Ukraine Born Brothers Small Factory Small Town Moscow Town She Textile Accountant Child Moved Her

My grandmother was content to sit in the back yard wearing her old, wide-brimmed summer hat and occasionally getting up to feed herself raspberries from the seemingly inexhaustible bushes. Keith Gessen

Old Sit Herself Back Summer Hat Wearing Seemingly Feed Occasionally Content Yard Inexhaustible Up Getting Bushes Grandmother Her

One of the most influential of the post-Soviet books was the Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's 'Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization' (1995), a study of the steel city of Magnitogorsk, the U.S.S.R.'s answer to Pittsburgh, as it was constructed in the shadow of the Ural Mountains in the early nineteen-thirties. Keith Gessen

Princeton Mountains Books City Shadow Magnetic Constructed Civilization Steel Study Most Answer Historian Mountain Pittsburgh Influential Stalinism Early

Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, on the periphery of the Russian Empire. His father was a hard-drinking cobbler whose relationship with Joseph's mother, Keke Geladze, came to an end when the boy was around six years old. Keith Gessen

Relationship Mother Old Father Born Russian Joseph Empire Periphery Around Boy Came His Years Georgia End Six Stalin Whose

After Stalin died, the Soviet Union began inching toward the world again. The ban on jazz was lifted. Ernest Hemingway was published; the Pushkin Museum in Moscow hosted an exhibit of the works of Picasso. Keith Gessen

In 1959, Moscow gave space to an exhibition of American consumer goods, and my father, also a member of this generation, tasted Pepsi for the first time. Keith Gessen

Time Generation Space Father First This Generation Gave Member Pepsi Consumer Moscow Goods Also First Time Exhibition American Tasted

Brodsky was born in May, 1940, a year before the German invasion. His mother worked as an accountant; his father was a photographer and worked for the Navy Museum in Leningrad when Brodsky was young. They were doting parents and much beloved by Iosif Brodsky, who was their only child. Keith Gessen

Mother Father Parents Year Before Young Photographer Born Invasion Only Only Child Were His German Accountant Child May Worked Much Who Navy Beloved Museum

All literature has this moral strain, but in Russian literature, it's particularly sharp. Keith Gessen

Moral Russian Sharp Particularly Literature Strain

I grew up in this household where reading was the most noble thing you could do. When I was a teenager, we would have family dinners where we all sat there reading. It wasn't because we didn't like each other. We just liked reading. The person who made my reading list until my late teen years was my mom. Keith Gessen

Mom Family You Made Reading Teen Other Teen Years Late Teenager Would Dinners Could Noble Like Liked Most Until Household Because Years Up Person List Just Where Grew Who Sat Each Thing

From the start of his administration, President Barack Obama had tried to lower tensions with Russia and refocus American attention on a rising China; he had made clear he wanted no part in the problems of the post-Soviet periphery. Keith Gessen

Problems Made President President Barack Obama Obama Administration Tried Russia Rising Had He Part Clear Attention Tensions Periphery His American Wanted China Barack Barack Obama Lower Start

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