Correspondence with Vladimir Kara-Murza

In April 2023 the Russian opposition politician and human rights activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for speaking out against the war on Ukraine. He was found guilty of ‘running an ‘undesirable organization’, of ‘spreading falsehoods about the Russian army’ and of high treason – likely in connection with his contribution to the Magnitsky Act, passed by US Congress in 2012. Kara-Murza was a close affiliate of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and was himself twice the target of poison attacks in 2015 and 2017.

Just before his sentencing, journalists Anastasia Shteinert and Alex Strelnikov sent questions to Kara-Murza through the Russian prison postal system. In May, they received a handwritten response, in which Kara-Murza reflected on the future of Russia, his unprecedentedly severe sentence, and the war in Ukraine. Eurozine has prepared an English translation of the letter. Cuts made in the text for the sake of clarity are marked with ‘…’

What currently supports you and gives you hope for the future?

Historical education has been incredibly helpful – perhaps it has never been as useful to me as it is in the current circumstances. After all, everything that is happening now has already occurred in our history, and has always ended. And, as a rule, it has ended abruptly. This, too, will come to an end, and much sooner than some expect today, I believe….

https://www.eurozine.com/deep-political-changes-are-only-a-matter-of-time/