Activist and writer Masha Gessen has won the 2023 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking. I heard Gessen speak at the Hannah Arendt Center and at the University of Pennsylvania. I read her articles in the New Yorker. She has been a leading dissident voice in Russia for almost two decades, barely escaping Russia after criticizing Vladimir Putin. She has been warning the world about Putin at the risk of her life. The official announcement follows:
Following the win last year by the Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan, the Hannah-Arendt Prize for Political Thinking in Germany today (August 4) has named journalist, author, translator, and activist Masha Gessen the winner of its 2023 Prize for Political Thought.
The formal presentation of the honor is set for December 15 in Bremen, and the award carries a purse of €10,000 (US$11,013), the accolade to be presented by the Hannah Arendt board, the Bremen senate, and board members of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. A round-table discussion with Gessen is scheduled for the following day, December 16, its focus to be “The Search for the State in Totalitarian and Autocratic Societies.”
In its announcement today, the program notes the sheer breadth of topical and thematic concern reflected in Gessen’s work, its rationale reading, “For years, Masha Gessen has been describing political tendencies and conflicts in American and Russian society.
“Gessen reports on power games and totalitarian tendencies as well as civil disobedience and the love of freedom. Masha Gessen writes about the arduous everyday life, cultural conflicts and the struggle for democratic self-determination.
“In a time characterized by autocratic erosion in the United States, war-ready totalitarianism in Russia, and serious conflicts between the great powers, understanding is becoming a civic duty. With books as well as essays in The New Yorker and a strong public presence, Gessen opens up new perspectives that help to understand a world in accelerated change.”
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