Is this how Russia ends?

An interview with the writer Masha Gessen about why Putin might dare a nuclear strike on Poland, what democratic leaders don’t grasp that authoritarians do, and what Russia might look like after Putin

One day, Vladimir Putin will no longer lead Russia. And, according to the writer and journalist Masha Gessen, there may then no longer be a country called Russia to lead.

This was one of many startling analyses I heard in my conversation the other day with Gessen, a Moscow-born, New York-based journalist and writer who is one of our leading thinkers on d…