Vladimir Kara-Murza is a political prisoner, arrested on April 11. National Review readers are well familiar with him. He is a Russian politician, journalist, and democracy advocate. I have written about him, and podcasted with him, several times. I will have a piece about his case in our next issue. In the meantime, I have done a podcast with his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza: here. She is doing all she can to sound the alarm about her husband and win his release.
For 15 years, Vladimir Kara-Murza worked alongside Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader. They were very close friends. Nemtsov was godfather to one of the Kara-Murzas’ children. He was murdered in February 2015, gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin. Kara-Murza himself was almost murdered — twice, in poison attacks. Yet he would not leave Russia, for exile. He insisted on continuing his work in his own country, despite the obvious dangers.
In 2017, I asked him what his wife, Evgenia, thought. He said, “If you ask her, she’ll say, ‘I knew what I was signing up for.’” He then said — blushing slightly — “I’m grateful to have such a woman in my life.”
Here is Evgenia herself, speaking in our podcast: “When we were dating, 20 years ago, I was looking at him and thinking, ‘You know, I can imagine spending my life with this man. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s honorable. He has so much integrity.’ Later, when the poisonings and persecutions began, I thought, ‘I wish our lives could be a little more boring.’ But I do admire Vladimir. I’ve always admired and respected him for his principled stand, and I would never have him any different.”
About Vladimir’s insistence on working in Russia, rather than abroad, Evgenia says this: “He believes that he would not have the moral right to call on people to fight if he were not sharing the same risks.”
Evgenia Kara-Murza worked for a time as a translator: between Russian and French, and between Russian and English. Eventually, however, she joined Vladimir in his political work and his human-rights work. He was “drowning in projects,” she says. And how could you choose? How could you choose between, for example, advocacy of personal, targeted sanctions against wrongdoers, and advocacy in behalf of political prisoners? Vladimir thought it necessary to do it all.
On March 15, he gave a speech to the Arizona legislature. “These are very dark times in Russia,” he said. “These are times when we have hundreds of political prisoners, and that number is only going to grow.” Less than a month later, Kara-Murza himself became a political prisoner.
“I’m continuing his work while he cannot do it,” says Evgenia.
I think of Avital Sharansky, wife of Natan, or Anatoly, as he was in the Soviet Union. She married him in 1974. The next day, she left for Israel. She had a visa, he did not. (Hence, he was a refusenik, someone denied an exit visa.) In 1977, he was arrested, and spent nine years in the Gulag. Brutal years. Abroad and free, Avital campaigned for him. She was very effective at it. A few years ago, Natan remarked to me, “The biggest mistake the KGB made was letting Avital out.”
Today, Evgenia Kara-Murza tells me, “I’ve never been a public person, and I’ve never enjoyed being in the public eye. I am a quite introverted person, so I like working from home, and I like taking care of the kids, but unfortunately the situation sometimes changes, and I emerge when my husband is either poisoned or thrown in jail, because this is my partner, my soulmate, and I am prepared to do everything I can to bring my children’s father home.”
Again, to hear her, in a podcast, go here.