A nation, extensively re-Sovietized
Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of a piece published in the current issue of National Review.
In Yefremov, Russia, a 13-year-old girl drew an anti-war picture in school. This led to the arrest of her father, Alexei Moskalyov. It was discovered that he had criticized the Ukraine war on social media. His daughter, Masha, was sent to an orphanage. He was at home, under house arrest, awaiting sentence. He fled to Belarus. He was soon picked up, apparently when he turned on his phone. He was sent back to Yefremov. And he has now been sentenced to two years.
Will he survive the imprisonment? That is always a question.
If all this sounds Soviet — it is. Over the past 20 years, Russia has been extensively re-Sovietized. The former KGB colonel at the top, Vladimir Putin, has seen to that.
According to Memorial, there are more political prisoners in Russia today than there were in the late Soviet period. Memorial was the leading civil-society organization in Russia. It has been banned, along with civil society more broadly.
Memorial was founded by Andrei Sakharov, the great Soviet-era physicist and dissident, and his friends. Until recently, there was also an Andrei Sakharov Foundation. It too, of course, has been banned.
Some political prisoners are well-known, most are not. The best-known, probably, is Alexei Navalny. In August 2020, he survived a murder attempt, by poison. He is now being kept in a small isolation cell, a punishment cell.
Earlier this year, Navalny’s supporters in Berlin put up a replica of such a cell in front of the Russian embassy. This was the kind of protest — and expression of solidarity — often seen in Cold War days.
Last year, a film director, Daniel Roher, made a documentary about Navalny (called, simply, “Navalny”). This March, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In attendance at the ceremony were the prisoner’s wife, Yulia, and their children, Dasha and Zakhar. Speaking from the stage, Yulia said, “My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I am dreaming of the day you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”
Another well-known political prisoner is Vladimir Kara-Murza. Like Navalny, he survived an attempt to kill him by poison. In fact, he has survived two such attempts. He is now facing 25 years for high treason. (He criticized the Ukraine war.)
In September 2022, a journalist, Ivan Safronov, was sentenced to 22 years for high treason. The authorities offered him twelve, in exchange for a confession of guilt. He refused. Safronov’s father, Ivan Sr., was also a journalist. He died in 2007 when he fell — if “fell” is the right word — out of a window.
For 15 years, Kara-Murza worked alongside Boris Nemtsov, who was the leader of the Russian opposition. On February 27, 2015, he was murdered on a bridge within sight of the Kremlin. Every year, on February 27, admirers of Nemtsov place flowers on the bridge. Every year, some are arrested for doing so, as happened this year.
After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, Nemtsov said, “Ukraine chose the European way, which implies the rule of law, democracy, and change of power. Ukraine’s success on this path is a direct threat to Putin’s power, because he chose the opposite course — a lifetime in power, filled with arbitrariness and corruption.”
In Arkhangelsk, a college student, Olesya Krivtsova, criticized the Ukraine war on social media. She was reported to the authorities by some of her fellow students. (Classically Soviet.) Her mother, Natalya, spoke to Uliana Pavlova of CNN. Explaining her daughter, Natalya said, “She has a heightened sense of justice, which makes her life hard. The inability to remain silent is now a major sin in the Russian Federation.”
Here is a paragraph from Pavlova’s report:
According to Natalya Krivtsova, police burst into an apartment on December 26 where her daughter was living with her husband Ilya, forcing the young people to lie face down on the ground and allegedly threatening them with a sledgehammer, which the officers told her was a “hello” from the Wagner Group, a private military contractor headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Said the mother, “Olesya was very frightened because she had seen the video in which a prisoner was killed with a sledgehammer.” Here is another paragraph from Uliana Pavlova’s report, explaining:
In the notorious video referred to by Natalya Krivtsova, mercenaries from the Wagner Group, which actively recruits prisoners, apparently executed a former convict, Yevgeny Nuzhin, with a sledgehammer after he attempted to flee his post. The video description said: “The traitor received the traditional, primordial Wagnerian punishment.”
For her criticism of the Ukraine war, in social-media comments, Olesya Krivtsova faced ten years in prison. She has now been able to flee to Lithuania. She is 20 years old. Where her husband, Ilya, is, reports have not said.
Vladimir Rumyantsev was a blue-collar worker in Vologda. His hobby was ham radio and he broadcast his own show, mostly playing music. But last year, he became interested in the war and collected what information he could from independent media. He shared this information over his ham radio. Agents quickly came to get him.
Rumyantsev made a statement to the court, saying, “In order to evaluate the actions of the authorities, a person needs information, and not just official. As for the official version, life has already taught me not to trust it.”
The Rumyantsev case was reported by Yulia Paramonova, of RFE/RL (that combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty). There is a split in Rumyantsev’s family, as there is in so many. Paramonova quoted Vladimir’s brother, Sergei, saying,
I told him that such activity will not lead to good, that it is a criminal offense. In the spring we talked, but we didn’t find any common ground. He is always in eternal opposition to the authorities; he has his own opinion on everything going on in the country. I don’t know why he believes these people and doesn’t believe the government point of view. He believes Navalny and others.
Before he went to prison, Vladimir Rumyantsev wrote a letter, explaining his actions, his life. He mentioned a book, Moscow 2042, by Vladimir Voinovich. This is a satirical novel, published in 1986. It foretells of a Russia ruled by the “Communist Party of State Security,” which is an amalgam of the KGB, the Communist Party, and the Russian Orthodox Church. Rumyantsev said, “I didn’t expect it to become a reality.”
Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years. Like Navalny and Kara-Murza, he is an opposition politician. He spoke openly of the massacre of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, by Russian forces. He was convicted of spreading “fake news.”
In 2019, Putin and President Trump met at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. They had a photo-op. Noting the journalists in the room, Trump quipped, “Get rid of them.” (Putin is exceptionally good at that.) He then said to Putin, “‘Fake news’ is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.” Putin answered (in English), “We also have. It’s the same.”
After his conviction and sentencing, Ilya Yashin got out a message via the Telegram platform:
With this hysterical verdict, the authorities want to intimidate us all, but, in fact, it only shows their weakness. Strong leaders are calm and confident. Only weaklings try to shut everybody up and scorch any kind of dissent.
Yashin also said, “We have no reason to be sad. . . . We told the truth about war crimes and called for the bloodshed to stop.” Furthermore, “I can only repeat what I said on the day of my arrest: I am not afraid, and you must not be afraid. Changes are just around the corner.”
Last month, the Guardian put some questions to Yashin, and, through his lawyers, he was able to answer them, from prison. He wrote, for example,
Why did I refuse to emigrate? Because from the first day of the fighting, I understood that an anti-war voice should be speaking in Russia. It should speak as loudly as possible under the circumstances. Putin has done everything to silence the opponents of the attack on Ukraine. He intimidated Russians, he established military censorship, he forced his critics abroad under the threat of arrest. The Kremlin did its best to create the illusion of mass, total support in Russian society for military aggression. And I live here and I know that there is no total support, that many are against the war.
Asked whether he felt his life was at risk, Yashin wrote,
It is difficult to talk about this topic. After Nemtsov’s shooting at the Kremlin walls, Navalny’s poisoning, mass killings in Ukraine, you can expect anything from this government. But, to be honest, I try not to think about it. Just to keep from going crazy.
As with civil society, independent media have been essentially abolished in Russia. Meduza is a Russian news organization in exile — in Riga, specifically. The Kremlin has now made it a crime even to share links to Meduza’s reporting.
A journalist in Russia, Maria Ponomarenko, has been sentenced to six years. She is the mother of two young children. She reported on the Ukraine war, including the crimes committed by Russian forces. In a final statement to the court, she said, “Patriotism is love for the motherland. And love for the motherland should not be manifested in the encouragement of crime. Corruption is a crime. Attacking a neighbor is a crime.” What’s more, “no totalitarian regime has ever been as strong as before its collapse.”
In mid April, Mikhail Afanasyev, the editor of the online magazine Novy Fokus, was arrested. The magazine had published a report on the refusal of riot police in southern Siberia to enlist in the Ukraine war.
During the decades of the Soviet Union, Russian dissenters and truth-tellers were some of the bravest people on earth. So they are today.
There were brave ones in Germany, too. On March 6 of this year, Traute Lafrenz died at 103. She had been the last surviving member of the White Rose, the anti-Nazi group. This group handed out leaflets and scrawled graffiti — “Down with Hitler!” One of the leaflets read,
Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days? Who among us can imagine the degree of shame that will come upon us and upon our children when the veils fall from our faces and the awful crimes that infinitely exceed any human measure are exposed to the light of day?
Another White Rose leaflet read,
We will not keep silent. We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will not let you alone.
Traute Lafrenz was arrested and imprisoned, but the prison was liberated by American forces when she was awaiting sentence, which could have been death. (The leaders of the White Rose were beheaded.) She immigrated to America and lived an American life. On her hundredth birthday, in 2019, the German government awarded her its Order of Merit. The citation said that she “belonged to the few who, in the face of the crimes of National Socialism, had the courage to listen to the voice of their conscience and rebel against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews. She is a heroine of freedom and humanity.”
Might a future Russian government say similar things about Russians who are in prison today?
On March 29, the Kremlin arrested an American, taking him hostage. He is Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The day before, he had co-authored a piece headed “Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone.” As of this writing, he is in Lefortovo Prison, accused of spying.
On August 30, 1986, the Kremlin did just the same thing: arrested an American, taking him hostage. He was Nicholas Daniloff, a reporter for U.S. News & World Report. He was sent to Lefortovo, accused of spying.
Daniloff loved Russia — its language, its history, its culture. His grandfather had been an important Russian general during World War I. His great-great-grandfather was a “Decembrist,” i.e., one of those revolutionary officers in 1825. The journalist’s father had emigrated from Russia.
In 1961, Nick told his father that he was going to Russia, going to the Soviet Union, to be a correspondent. The elder Daniloff was not very pleased about this. “You think your American passport is going to save you from the Bolsheviks,” he told his son. “You’re wrong. They’re going to send you to the salt mines.”
Evan Gershkovich, too, is a lover of Russia. On March 31, two of his colleagues at the Wall Street Journal — Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw — wrote a piece about him. They said,
Mr. Gershkovich, 31 years old, is the American son of Soviet-born Jewish exiles who had settled in New Jersey. He fell in love with Russia — its language, the people he chatted with for hours in regional capitals, the punk bands he hung out with at Moscow dive bars.
On September 5, 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff was in prison, Secretary of State George P. Shultz spoke at Harvard. The occasion was the 350th anniversary of the college. I happened to be in the audience. And even now I can hear Shultz’s voice — saying,
I know that I’ve come to the right place to voice a message of outrage at the detention of Nick Daniloff, Harvard Class of 1956. The cynical arrest of an innocent American journalist reminds us of what we already know: Our traditions of free inquiry and openness are spurned by the Soviets, showing the dark side of a society prepared to resort to hostage-taking as an instrument of policy.
Shultz continued,
Let there be no talk of a trade for Daniloff. We and Nick himself have ruled that out. The Soviet leadership must find the wisdom to settle this case quickly in accordance with the dictates of simple human decency and of civilized national behavior.
Needless to say, there was a deal. As there probably will be for the new hostage, Evan Gershkovich.
For many years now, some of us have been accused of having “Cold War nostalgia.” The truth is, we are capable of seeing what is right in front of our noses. We are realists. For many years, people have said to us, “Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union, you know!” The best reply to that is: “Does Putin?”