Russian writer, historian, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, a former deputy of the opposition People’s Freedom Party, began serving 25 years in prison for treason in April 2022 after denouncing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In August, he was released in the largest prisoner swap with the West since World War II, along with 15 other political prisoners that included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and other Americans, Germans, and Russians. Moscow in return got eight Russians jailed in the West for spying, hacking computers, and even murder, The Associated Press reported.
The exchange was important because it included Russians, as well as foreign nationals. But it represents only a tiny step forward, Kara-Murza said at a Dartmouth forum on Oct. 16.
“We have more political prisoners today in Russia alone than the whole of the Soviet Union, so that’s 15 countries put together, had by the last years of the Communist regime in the 1980s,” he said.
“We cannot allow this exchange that freed us to end the conversation because so many are risking everything to speak out. It’s not just a question of unjust imprisonment. It is a question of life and death.”
The West must do more to oppose Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and his assault on all opposition in Russia, Kara-Murza said.
“Putin will not stop until he is stopped.”
He spoke to a crowd of some 100 people, and about 150 people online at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding event, Dissidence and Democracy in Russia: A Work in Progress. Also joining the discussion was Evgenia Kara-Murza, an acclaimed human rights advocate who is married to Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Tikhon Dzyadko, editor-in-chief of TV Rain (Dozhd), the last independent television station to operate in Russia. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, TV Rain has been operating in exile from Amsterdam, with an audience of more than 20 million viewers monthly.
“We are delighted to bring Vladimir Kara-Murza, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and Tikhon Dzyadko to campus as part of the Dickey Center’s Dissent and Democracy series to highlight the reasons—and the costs—of their work for political freedom and rights in Russia. Their story is one we all can and should learn from,” said Victoria Holt, the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director at Dickey.
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The discussion, in Cook Auditorium at the Tuck School of Business, was moderated by Lynn Patyk, chair of the Department of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies, and Stuart Finkel, associate professor of East European, Eurasian, and Russian studies. The department co-sponsored the event, which was also made possible with support for Great Issues Lectures from Mary and Peter R. Dallman ’51.
Dzyadko, the head of TV Rain, described the government crackdown on the media following the invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, TV Rain was the sole independent television outlet in Russia, although the broadcaster was only allowed to operate under close scrutiny with restrictions that kept it off the major satellite networks. Despite it all, TV Rain’s audience was growing.
“We knew we were annoying, but still they were trying to pretend that there was some kind of a democracy in Russia,” Dzyadko said.
After the invasion, everything changed. “Putin started one war with Ukraine and another war with freedom of speech and expression in Russia.”
TV Rain relocated to a number of operating bases, first in former Soviet countries before landing in Amsterdam, where it now reports on news such as dispatches from the front in Ukraine, the death of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner who was found dead in a Siberian prison in February, and the international business dealings of oligarchs and Putin’s inner circle. The broadcasts reach as many as 15 million viewers in Russia through YouTube, Dzyadko said.
TV Rain also started an annual telethon to benefit political prisoners.
“I don’t know how it is to sit in jail, but I do know sitting in jail is very expensive. It is expensive because you have to pay your lawyers. It is expensive because your family has to survive somehow,” Dzyadko said. “I also know there are a lot of Russians and Russian speaking people outside of Russia in the United States, in Germany, in Georgia, in France, and they want to do something but they don’t know what to do. This is something they can do.”
Evgenia Kara-Murza spoke about the journey that led her from focusing on “the little world” of keeping her children safe and caring for friends and family to becoming an internationally known human rights advocate.
She moved to the United States with their children as Russia began ramping up persecution of her husband, which included constant surveillance and two attempted poisonings.
“The story of our family’s trip through hell began in 2015 when, first, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated. He was a close friend and colleague and godfather to our younger daughter. Then three months after that, Vladimir was poisoned,” she said.
Her husband beat all the odds, she said, but it took over a year to recover and he had to relearn how to walk.
“But the moment he could actually walk, he took his cane and wobbled back to Moscow.”
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Then there was a second poisoning attack and “it was everything all over again. But there was never even a question or discussion about whether he would go back to Russia and continue his work,” she said.
That was when she realized she needed to take up the fight for political prisoners and for Russia’s future. “I got more and more involved in Vladimir’s work on political prisoners, on sanctions, doing research,” and organizing opportunities for Russian exiles to gather in cities around the world and find community and common cause in restoring Russian democracy. She became advocacy director at the Free Russia Foundation, where her work has been recognized with the Courage Under Fire Magnitsky Award, the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Service Medal, and the Lantos Human Rights Prize.
As for what Western states can do, all three advocated for more targeted sanctions that go after Putin’s inner circle and the oligarchs who fund Russia’s autocratic state. Under current sanctions, average Russian citizens cannot cross the border while Putin’s family and Russian billionaires continue to enjoy a jet-setting lifestyle in places like Paris and Milan, Vladimir Kara-Murza said.
The Kara-Murzas also spoke about their part in advocating for the passage of the Magnitsky Act, which authorizes the U.S. government to sanction those foreign government officials worldwide that are human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.
But what can the average citizens of democratic nations do to help, Kara-Murza said he is frequently asked.
“To this I want to say there is one simple, very practical thing that people can do. ” Contact organizations like Amnesty International or Prisoners of Conscience and write a letter to a political prisoner.
“One thing that really helped me survive and keep my sanity in Siberian prison was receiving letters from all over Russia and all over the world,” Vladimir Kara-Murza said. “It’s so important for a political prisoner not to feel isolated, not to feel forgotten. That’s just what the state wants you to feel. I can’t tell you how much light, and how much life, and how much hope there is in that small sheet of paper.”
And it was through his correspondence to his lawyer and to his wife that Kara-Murza was able to send his letters to the world that were published in The Washington Post. It was his lawyer who informed him in May that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for that series of columns.
“I never imagined at the time that Evgenia and I would be there at Columbia University to receive that prize,” he said. They will travel to New York later this month to attend the ceremony.
The Kara-Murzas and Dzyadko spent two full days at Dartmouth, meeting with the War and Peace Fellows on Wednesday, followed by an interview with World Outlook, a student-run foreign affairs podcast and journal before attending the public event Wednesday night. On Thursday they made class visits and finished the lineup of events with a lunch with Dickey’s Great Issues Scholars.
“It is good to see how engaged and concerned and aware these college students are about these issues. Before my imprisonment, traveling to colleges was a vital part of our work, and I’m very happy to resume that project since my release,” Kara-Murza said.
Alex Azar ’25, who is majoring in East European, Eurasian, and Russian studies, attended the War and Peace fellows lunch and was in the audience on Wednesday night.
“I really enjoyed the discussion of more targeted sanctions. I think often it’s hard to get real Russians’ perspectives on how to respond to the situation with Russia,” he said. “The appeal to Western countries to speak to the Russian people and vice versa was an important moment. The opportunity to converse with these leaders was incredibly special.”
One of the class visits was to Patyk’s course Dostoevsky and the Problem of Evil. Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Omsk in Western Siberia, the same place that Dostoevsky served four years in penal servitude for his oppositional activities. Dostoevsky became a journalist and editor-in-chief after he returned from Siberia, Patyk said.
“We thought that they would bring a sense of history and be able to update my students on political opposition today, the experience of political prisoners in Russia, as well as what it is like to be a journalist and an editor under conditions of regime censorship,” Patyk said.
The Dissent and Democracy initiative at the Dickey center aims to highlight the ways that dissent contributes to healthy democracies, and to allow Dartmouth students to engage in person with dissidents who take the risk to speak and act out against anti-democratic movements.