Last Friday, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation presented prominent Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza with the Dissident Human Rights Award at the Victims of Communism Museum. The event was part of the organization’s annual Captive Nations Week Summit and allowed the revered figure to receive the honor in-person after having been awarded it in absentia last year while imprisoned.
Before the ceremony, Kara-Murza held a closed-door meeting with journalists. The meeting showed the group exactly why the most venerable individuals so often emerge from the places most deprived of liberty.
His gentle, disarming demeanor resembled nothing of the cold, hardened image most conjure up in their heads of an exiled Russian politician who has just endured a stint in an Arctic prison camp. His politeness even extended as far as wishing for the good health of Vladimir Putin. He longs for the day that the Russian president is seated — alive and well — in a courtroom (“Milosevic-style”), forced to come face to face with the families of Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and countless other victims.
But his genuine hope for Russia’s future could not overcome his innate political sobriety. Kara-Murza is under no illusion that Russia is on the verge of revolution. This doesn’t discount the inherent unpredictability of the world, though. He made sure to remind the room that both the tsarist and Soviet regimes collapsed in a mere three-day span.
The current state of political repression in Russia doesn’t just rival the days of the Soviet Union, he says. It eclipses it. There remain more political prisoners in today’s Russia than at the height of the Cold War. In a way, the targeting seems ever more inclusive.
Kara-Murza recalled the story of a 15-year-old schoolboy who received five years in prison for printing leaflets critical of Putin. Cases such as this highlight the fragility of Putin’s Russia. Information flows are highly restricted. The dissident shared that the only way to access anything of value in the country is through VPNs. The technology is widely used across Russia today.
The large and ostensibly pro-war rallies broadcast to the world are mostly by-products of professional or political coercion. Opinion polls in Russia remain a contradiction in terms, Kara-Murza emphasized.
I found it irresistible to ask if he gleaned any insights or consolation from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago while behind bars. “It’s like a practical guide,” he replied without hesitation.
Kara-Murza may wish Putin good health (the better for him to face his victims later), but he still has utter disgust for the Russian strongman. Kara-Murza spoke most passionately not of the torture he endured in Siberia or of the danger he continues to face for speaking out, but of how Russia’s global standing has crumbled under Putin’s reign. “He’s destroyed Russia,” Kara-Murza lamented. “Russia used to be a respectable country.” He seemed more offended at what Putin has done to his home than fearful of any further retribution.
Fear is, after all, “still a choice,” according to Kara-Murza. He shared a letter he received while in prison. Its author delivered the news to him that thousands of people had lined up to sign an anti-war petition. “I never realized how many of us there are,” the closing line read.
The dissident also stressed the importance of supporting Ukraine in its current fight. “We know from history what the appeasement of dictators leads to,” Kara-Murza reminded the ceremony’s audience later in the evening.
Despite his obvious erudition, the famed Russian doesn’t come off as particularly doctrinaire or dogmatic. That’s the beauty of his message. One is instinctively drawn to it.
The story of modern Russia proves that liberty is not a self-evident ideal. It must be fought for and carefully preserved. And few fight harder than Vladimir Kara-Murza.
He insisted I pass his regards along to Jay Nordlinger. “He happens to be a friend of mine,” Kara-Murza added with a smile.