02 Aug 24 | Europe and Central Asia, Germany, News and features, Newsletters, Russia
There is a tendency to see Russia as a huge monolithic entity with a matching ideology. This is the expansionist, imperial Russia that poisons its enemies and kidnaps their children. It is the Russia of the gulags, of Putin, Stalin and the Tsars. But there is another Russia. It is the Russia of the eight brave students who stood in Red Square in 1968 to demonstrate against the invasion of Czechoslovakia and inspired the founders of this magazine. It the Russia of the dissidents of the 1970s and the reformers of the 1990s. It is the Russia of Pussy Riot, of Alexander Livintenko, Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny.
This is the Russia of Vladmir Kara-Murza, the Russian activist, politician, journalist and historian released this week in a prisoner swap with Russian spies held in the West.
Much has been made of the detention and release of American journalist Evan Gershkovich – and rightly so. The Wall Street Journal reporter has become an important symbol of the fundamental values of a free media. It is to his eternal credit that his final request before release was an interview with Vladimir Putin. We also welcome the release of Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist from the Tatar/Bashkir service.
But it is Vladimir Kara-Murza who most fully represents the dissident spirit of Russia that runs counter to the authoritarian tendency that has dominated the country for so much of its recent history.
He is often described simply as one of the fiercest opponents of Putin, But Kara-Murza is so much more than that. He is above all the keeper of the flame of the Russian dissident tradition. He, more than anyone, understands the power of this alternative version of Russian identity.
Supporters of Index interested in the subject should watch the four-part documentary series, They Chose Freedom, directed and presented by Kara-Murza in 2005. The film is edited by his wife Evgenia, who has led the campaign for his release. Two decades later it is still acts as a powerful reminder of the courage of those who spoke out against the Soviet system. It examines the roots of the dissident movement in the weekly poetry readings held in Mayakovsky Square in the 1950s. It includes interviews with the key players in the movement, including Vladminir Bukovsky, Anatoly Sharnsky and three of the participants of the Red Square demonstration of 1968, Pavel Litvinov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and and Viktor Fainberg.
In April 2023, shortly before he was sentenced to 25 years for charges linked to his opposition to the war in Ukraine, Kara-Murza said: “I know the that the day will come when the darkness engulfing our country will clear. Our society will open its eyes and shudder when it realises what crimes were committed in its name.”.
The release comes after reports earlier this year that Kara-Murza had been transferred to a harsher prison regime and that his health was deteriorating. An image shared on Telegram (see above) by fellow dissident Ilya Yashin, also released in the prisoner swap, show Kara-Murza this morning in Germany where they will hold a press conference later today. We await news that he and family will finally be able to welcome him back to Britain, which they have made their home.
12 Jul 24 | Europe and Central Asia, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Russia, United Kingdom
A Russian art collective which was due to open a show in London highlighting the plight of opponents of the Putin regime claim their exhibition was cancelled at the last minute because one of them was Israeli.
The Pomidor group was founded in Moscow in 2018 by the artists Polina Egorushkina and Maria Sarkisyants, but the duo was forced to relocate two years ago after the Kremlin crackdown on opposition activity. Egorushkina now lives in London and Sarkisyants in Ashkelon in southern Israel.
Their latest show, Even Elephants Hold Elections, was part of an ongoing project about free expression designed to challenge people in democratic countries to understand life in an authoritarian regime and reflect on their own experience. Pomidor’s work includes embroidered banners celebrating political prisoners which the artists display in friends’ windows and phone booths on the street.
Among these are tributes to Viktoria Petrova, imprisoned in a psychiatric unit for anti-war social media posts, Mikhail Simonov, a 63-year-old pensioner arrested for comments on other people’s social media and 13-year-old Masha Moskaleva, who was taken away from her father after drawing anti-war pictures at school.
The show was due to open on 3 July at the Metamorphika Gallery in east London. But on the evening before, the two artists were told the gallery had received messages raising concerns about “inappropriate behaviour” on social media.
This referred to two posts pinned on Maria’s Instagram account. One post from 7 October expressed her horror at the “terrible evil” and included the words, in Russian, “Israel my beloved, we are here, we are here to support each other, all my thoughts are with the kidnapped, let only them return home alive. Eternal memory to the fallen.” A second post marked the one-month anniversary and expressed solidarity with the Israeli hostages and their families.
Sarkisyants told Index they were called to an urgent meeting the next day: “They showed me the two posts and said you should clarify your position. I said, I am from Israel and there was nothing in the post but facts: 1200 people were killed and 300 became hostages.”
The gallery asked Pomidor to sign a joint statement with Metamorphika condemning “the Zionist regime”, which they refused to do. “I’m Israeli. I was there,” said Sarkisyants. “What they proposed was impossible for me to do”
After several hours of discussion, Pomidor suggested a compromise of putting the exhibition solely in the name of Polina, but the gallery demanded the collective remove all work connected with Maria. At this point the exhibition was cancelled.
Pomidor posted on Instagram: “The problem came up because Maria is from Israel.”
This is something the gallery strongly denies. Metamorphika founder Simon Ballester told Index: “We were really compassionate with her story. But we asked her to say she had empathy for Palestinians and was against the war crimes.”
Ballester said the problem came when Sarkisyants expressed her support for the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
“It’s outrageous” the artist told Index. “I told them I do not support Netanyahu or his government. I feel they betrayed us. We expected them to protect us, but they didn’t. But I support my country Israel and its people.”
Since the cancellation of the show, Metamorphika claims it has received over a thousand “hate mails, insults and threats”. According to Ballester, he and his colleagues have been accused of being “Nazis, rapists, antisemites and misogynistic scumbags”.
Asked if he now regretted cancelling the show he said: “I think it was the right thing. I’m sorry it was the day of the show. That was really unfortunate.” He said the gallery operated on humanist principles and was striving for peace and equality.
The Pomidor exhibition will next travel to Montreal in Canada and the artists are in discussion with a gallery in London to host the show later in the year.
12 Apr 24 | News and features, Newsletters, Russia
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a father to three children: two daughters and a son. He bears the exact same name as his father, who was one of the country’s most prominent journalists and a pioneer of independent post-Soviet television. As a child growing up in Russia the younger Vladimir made up stories constantly and loved to imitate politicians, a creative, energetic character who had his family constantly roaring with laughter. When he was 12 he set up a political party to defend the rights of children. He moved to London as a teenager and, at the age of 15 in 1997, stayed up all night to follow the results of the UK general election. He was a pallbearer at the funeral of the late US senator John McCain. He’s a “cat person” in contrast to his wife, Evgenia, who’s a “dog person”. He has a sweet tooth, especially when it comes to ice cream. He loves to cook.
These are just some facts about a man that the campaigner Bill Browder calls “incredible”, “the type of person that our world needs the most”. But these are not what he is known for. Instead it’s his incarceration in a Russia prison, which yesterday reached the grim milestone of two years, that has made him headline news. It’s his poisoning by Putin not once but twice. It’s also, more positively, his unrelenting pursuit of democracy and human rights, which has seen him being awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. It’s his role in the 2012 passage of the Magnitsky Act, which freezes the assets and bans the visas of Russian human rights violators.
Two years ago he was sentenced to 25 years for charges linked to his criticism of the war in Ukraine. His sentence is the lengthiest at present of any political prisoner in Russia (side note yesterday was also the two-year anniversary of the detention of Sasha Skochilenko, who was arrested for distributing anti-war leaflets in a grocery store. She is serving a seven-year sentence for that simple act). Fears for Vladimir’s life are large. His health alone is in a terrible place.
Last night at an event organised by Browder in London, spokespeople from the UK government said they’d be taking a more active role in pursuing Vladimir’s release. We hope they are true to their word and their efforts bear fruit. As we wrote yesterday up to this point the UK government’s response has been “woefully inadequate”.
At the end of yesterday’s event his mother, Elena, took to the stage. She bookended her speech with five simple words:
“Please help save my son.”
Vladimir was not in Russia when they launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Just before returning there he had been in London, taking to the stage at Barbican and eating with friends at Cecconi’s, a popular Italian restaurant in Shoreditch. His life was good. He could have stayed and many begged him to do just that. But he felt compelled to return. In his words: “I’m a Russian politician. All Russians should stand up to Putin. But how can I ask others to do that if I’m too afraid to return to my own country? I must be there.”
Vladimir went back to Russia to fight for a greater cause because he felt duty-bound. We now have a duty to fight for him.
22 Mar 24 | News and features, North Korea, Opinion, Romania, Russia, Ruth's blog, Rwanda
By international comparison, Putin’s ‘win’ in the recent elections in Russia was practically marginal.
Forget the ruthless despots of yesteryear; Putin’s victory could put him in the running for the title of “Worst Dictator Ever” securing as he did, just 87% of the vote and struggling to convince a whole 13% of Russia’s population that he deserves their vote.
Putin’s efforts to reach the dizzying heights of previous autocratic excellence is not without precedent.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian maestro of self-delusion, once claimed a staggering 98.8% approval rating from voters who seemingly found his continued leadership irresistible.
And, of course, the multiple successes of Saddam Hussein, who, not content with anything less than perfection, treated himself to not one, but two elections where he waltzed away with a cool 99% of the vote, leaving the remaining 1% presumably too busy planning their escape routes to bother casting a ballot.
Even by recent standards, Putin’s election efforts fall into the ‘must try harder’ category. Take Paul Kagame – head of state in the unquestionably safe state of Rwanda – secured an impressive 98.8% of the vote in 2017. By coincidence, his two challengers were deemed not to have met the nomination threshold by the Rwandan Electoral Commission.
And even by Russian standards, Putin is an under-achiever. The absolutely above board and beyond reproach referendum in 2014 that took place in Crimea saw the Ukranian peninsula experience a collective outbreak of Russiophilia, with a jaw-dropping 96.77% of voters deciding that annexation was their number one wish.
But of course, when it comes to precarious polls, poor Putin is but an enthusiastic amateur of electoral absurdity when compared to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un whose 2019 flawless victory saw him win 100% of the vote. Imagine that, Putin. A leader so popular that no-one felt the need to vote against you.
So, at Index on Censorship, we offer our commiserations to Putin on an election which will inevitably cause him to struggle to look his fellow dictators in the eye. But he should take heart, for in the grand tapestry of dictatorial hubris, he may have fallen short of the coveted triple-digit approval rating, but he’s certainly earned his place in the hall of shame. Bravo!
But in all seriousness, dictators yearn for legitimacy but equally cannot resist inflating their egos with absurd election results. Putin’s 87% victory is merely the latest in a long line of autocrats entangled in their own delusions. For them, the allure of unchecked power is intoxicating, and the illusion of overwhelming support is irresistible. So they manipulate, coerce, and fabricate, all in the name of bolstering their image and maintaining their iron grip on power.
Yet, in their desperate pursuit of approval, they only reveal the hollow emptiness of their rule and the farcical nature of their so-called “elections.”
In the grand theatre of autocracy, where dictators vie for the title of “Most Absurd Electoral Farce,” Vladimir Putin may have inadvertently claimed the crown as the reigning champion of underachievement.
His inability to secure a unanimous victory serves as a glaring reminder of the limitations of his power and the resilience of those who dare to defy his iron grip.
While we chuckle at his inflated ego and his desperate grasp for legitimacy, let us not forget the sobering reality faced by millions of Russians who lack the freedom to express dissent without fear of reprisal.
We can poke fun at Putin’s absurdity but we must also reaffirm our commitment to democracy and freedom of expression, values that remain elusive for too many in Putin’s Russia.
And we stand with the 13%.
