In today’s installment of my “Oslo Journal,” I have an item on Boris Nemtsov, the opposition politician in Russia who was murdered earlier this year — murdered just outside the Kremlin. I’d like to say a further word about him.
I think of the question, “How’s the hunt for the real killers going?” Remember that one? Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered in 1994. Obviously, O.J. didn’t do it, because a jury said so. He promised to hunt for the “real killers.” What year is this, anyway?
In the Nemtsov case, some Chechens have been arrested. The investigation looks unreal, certainly to seasoned Russia-watchers.
At any rate, I know more about Boris Nemtsov in death than I did about him in life. Pity how often that happens. In Oslo, Nemtsov’s cousin, Igor Eidman, said that Nemtsov had been a talented physicist, and would have gone on to do that in life. “But his love of freedom and liberalism brought him into politics.”
Sharansky, too, was a science whiz (and chess whiz). Then there’s Sakharov.
Anyway . . .