The life of Masha Gessen

What has been posted on the ABC website:

Masha is a Russian-American journalist who writes for the New Yorker.

She grew up in the Soviet Union and migrated to the United States with her family when she was 14.

After the fall of communism, Masha returned to Moscow to report on the dramatic upheavals in Russian life.

She wrote critical stories on the Putin regime, which led to Vladimir Putin calling her at her apartment and inviting her to a private meeting.

Masha has since migrated back to America, in fear that the Russian authorities might take her children from her.

Almost half the interview discussed her Jewish identity and how that overlaps with her description as “Russia’s leading LGBT rights activist”,  having claimed that for many years she was “probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole of that country”.

Listen to the interview with Masha Gessens on ABC Conversations.

[Masha Gessens appeared on the ABC Q&A program last Monday.]