Russia's President Vladimir Putin was an agent of the KGB — the Soviet Union's secret police. It's no accident that he's now the leader of a post-Soviet country controlled once again by bureaucrats who were never purged in the interests of freedom and democracy. Masha Gessen is a journalist who left Putin's Russia. Her latest book is The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. (Listen to Part II.)
KCRW
