Clarissa is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. She is yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can't use her real name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us something that not a single academic from a former communist country that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity politics and the "social justice" regime. Below, some quotes from our interview:

I have the feeling of extreme frustration. Our stories of people in the former Soviet space are constantly dismissed. I have no idea why. I think it happens because people still think that the ideas that existed in the Soviet Union are basically good – that it was the execution that was at times excessive. My father says what happened to us was not about the economic system. The economic system was just an excuse. This could happen anywhere – even under capitalism.