Summary
Overview
In this intimate and shocking first episode of 'The Idiot,' journalist Masha Gessen recounts how their elastic, immigrant family absorbed cousin Alan and his mother Lena after they arrived from Moscow with Alan's five-year-old son—but without his mother Priscilla. What begins as a seemingly messy custody dispute transforms into something far darker: Alan's arrest for hiring someone to murder Priscilla. Gessen navigates the uncomfortable territory of being a double agent, helping Priscilla locate her son while maintaining family relationships, only to watch the situation escalate from international parental kidnapping to an alleged murder-for-hire plot.
The Elastic Family and Alan's Arrival
Gessen introduces their Soviet immigrant family as fundamentally elastic, capable of stretching to accommodate spouses, in-laws, adopted children, even ex-spouses over forty-five years in America. This elasticity is tested when cousin Alan arrives from Moscow in 2019 with his five-year-old son O but without O's mother Priscilla, claiming he's come for the child to 'commence his studies.' The family's immediate reaction is dark humor rather than alarm, with Gessen texting their brother about whether Alan has kidnapped his son and abandoned his daughter.
- Gessen's family immigrated from the Soviet Union 45 years ago and has stretched to absorb multiple members across continents
- Alan and his mother Lena arrived in the U.S. from Moscow in 1990 when Alan was 15, staying with Gessen's parents for almost a year
- In summer 2019, Alan arrived with his five-year-old son O, claiming the child was there to 'commence his studies' while his wife and baby daughter remained in Russia
- Alan warned the family that his wife might contact them with 'requests detrimental to mine and O's interests'
- Alan showed up at Gessen's father's house on Cape Cod without warning, with O and Lena in tow
" So, our cousin has kidnapped his son and abandoned his daughter? The answer would appear to be maybe, my brother responded. "
Alan's Character and Questionable Past
Gessen paints Alan as a pompous, unlikable figure who styled himself an entrepreneur but had a history of shady ventures. His business career included hiring students to write papers for wealthier classmates, getting fired from his first legal job, and working increasingly dubious jobs in Russia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe involving diamonds and security for mining operations. Despite—or perhaps because of—his outsized personality, Alan became a magnetic presence in the family, entertaining younger members with tales of his exploits.
- Alan started his first business in college hiring students to write papers for wealthier students
- After getting fired from his first legal job, Alan claimed it was because his 'fine legal mind made the other lawyers insecure'
- Alan worked in Africa with diamonds and an Israeli company providing security for mining operations
- Alan married a Zimbabwean woman who was reportedly the country's former beauty queen
" If someone had set out to write an unlikable international huckster character, they couldn't have laid it on any thicker. "
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