Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Mruz was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason and defaming the Russian army. We offer you an interview that Kara-Murza gave to Aktuálně.cz in November 2019.
In a month it will be twenty years since Vladimir Putin became the President of Russia. What is your take on his assumption of power with the passage of time?
I remember very well the day when it became clear to me what the government of Vladimir Putin would mean. When he joined, he was a mystery to many people. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, everyone asked who Putin actually is, what his views are and what to expect from him.
Political Russian Vladimir Kara-Murza. | Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Leonidalekseev
December 20 is the so-called Chekist Day in Russia. A celebration of people working in the Secret Service. Putin was prime minister at the time – in 1999 – and on this day he unveiled a commemorative plaque to Yuri Andropov at the building of the former headquarters of the Soviet KGB. The man who led this secret service for over fifteen years was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and briefly its head. He was the person in charge of the system of psychiatry abuse against dissidents, the system of suppression and intimidation of critics of the communist regime.
After he did this, it was no longer a question for me what to think of Putin. The next twenty years were a continuation of this policy. Basically the KGB government. Putin is a former KGB officer and has surrounded himself with the same people.
How did Putin’s government begin to manifest itself then?
The first line of attack was directed at the independent media. Four days after taking the presidential oath, he sent tax inspectors and the police to the headquarters of the media group Media Most, which operated, for example, NTV television. Within three years, all independent television stations were either closed or taken over by the state.
Putin achieved three things quite quickly: He destroyed the independent media. In October 2003, he sent the richest Russian, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, behind bars, which was a signal to everyone that he would not tolerate any criticism of his policies. And in 2003, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, elections in Russia were rigged so that representatives of the opposition did not get into parliament. Parliament has become a place where there is no discussion.
The trend was clear and continues to this day. In a short period of time, Putin managed to completely change Russia from the imperfect democracy of the 1990s to a country with a perfect authoritarian regime, which is still ongoing.
Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza?
Born in 1981. In 2003, he unsuccessfully ran for parliament for the liberal party Jabloko. Together with former chess player Garry Kasparov and opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, he lobbied for the adoption of the so-called Magnitsky Act, which introduced sanctions against government officials involved in the death of lawyer Grigory Magnitsky. In May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalized with fatal kidney failure due to poisoning. He then filed a criminal complaint for attempted murder, but the police never investigated anything. In February 2017, he fell into a coma for several days. According to him, he was saved by the fact that he was not home alone and his relatives called an ambulance. The doctors officially confirmed that he had been poisoned a second time, but they could not determine what.
Were you surprised that it happened as quickly and perfectly as you say?
Honestly, yes. Many people thought that once we had free elections and an independent media, we would never lose them. That politics may change, but these foundations of democracy will remain. But Putin proved them wrong. Today we have a media that is just propaganda of the regime and elections that are imitations of real elections, no real debate in parliament.
And we have political prisoners again. More than three hundred people are behind bars in several places in Russia just because they politically crossed the path of someone from the regime. At the same time, we know that imprisonment is not the worst thing that can happen. In February, five years will pass since the death of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot in the center of Moscow.
Are you convinced that Putin knew about Nemtsov’s murder?
In Russia, an authoritarian regime rules, which has the exercise of power worked out in detail. It is not possible to murder an opposition politician 200 meters from the Kremlin walls without it being an action coordinated with state officials. Official murder investigations focus only on the perpetrators and people up to a certain level of power. Any investigation of people who are closer to Putin is blocked and impossible.
Investigators have not officially identified anyone who organized or ordered the murder. They are not even allowed to describe the motive of the act as political, they are not allowed to talk about a political murder. They reject all the requests of the lawyers of Boris Němcov’s family in this regard. The organizers of the murder remain protected by the state.
It is important that democratic states put pressure on Russia. That is why I support the Magnitsky Act, which allows sanctions in the US and some other countries against specific people who are involved in illegalities and human rights violations in Russia. As a Russian and a Russian politician, I do not support sanctions against my country, but I do support them against these particular representatives of the regime. (Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who drew attention to extensive corruption in the state administration. He died ten years ago in police custody, later a law was named after him – editor’s note).
Putin’s current presidential term ends in 2024. Will he change the constitution to stay and continue to rule Russia?
He’s done it once before. In 2008, he handed over the post to Dmitry Medvedev and became prime minister. He actually took advantage of the fact that it is written in the constitution that the president may not run for a third term after two consecutive terms of office. That’s why he was able to return in 2012. I dare not guess what will happen after 2024. I am not only a politician, but also a historian, so I know how tricky it is to predict something in Russia for a long time ahead.
For example, in 1904, Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Pleve said that Russia would benefit from a short victorious war with Japan, that it would help solve domestic problems. A year later, serious riots and revolutions broke out in many parts of the country. No one expected them to such an extent.
When Lenin spoke in Zurich in January 1917 that his generation would not live to see the revolution, he probably did not anticipate that it would begin in six weeks. I myself remember that even in the summer of 1991, no one in the Soviet Union could imagine that the communist system would collapse, and with it the USSR.
In Russia, the appearance that the regime is solid and unshakable is often deceiving. The lessons of history are that society is usually not prepared for sudden changes and collapses. The Russian democratic opposition, of which I am a part, is trying to build the foundations of civil society so that we are ready for change this time. We try to get our candidates into politics at the local level and get some experience. The question is, of course, when and how the change will occur.
But they say that Russians are more afraid of change and instability…
There are more than 140 million Russians. Different opinions are everywhere. Some may be afraid, some not. Some want change because they are fed up with the current regime. But imagine that young people who can now go to the polls have never experienced any other politician than Putin in their lives. He has been in power for twenty years. This generation knows nothing but Putin. They don’t know any other political reality. Just Putin, Putin, Putin. I think many of them feel that this is not normal in a European country in the 21st century. He instinctively feels that this is wrong. That Russia should look different.
