Hello Orderers,
Welcome to the first of what I hope will be a regular ‘every Wednesday’ edition of our ORDERING THE DISORDER substack. As I mentioned last week, our goal is that every (or at least most) Wednesdays we will provide extra content and background and thoughts on the topic of that week’s Disorder show podcast (sometimes extra background on the guest of that week’s show, sometimes my or Alex Hall Hall’s thoughts or experiences on the topic, sometimes insights from a previous show in the same topic area, sometimes an extemporaneous musing) and once a month we will also send out a wrap up of all the perspectives and content the NATO and Global Enduring Disorder Project team has produced over the last month (like we did last week), hopefully giving some sense of the interconnections in our mad mad mad mad world.
So to get right to it: In this week’s Episode we spoke to Evgenia Kara-Murza as part of our ‘NATO and its Adversaries’ theme. This podcast is absolutely the most touching and emotional piece of audio, and of live political content, I’ve ever been a part of. I hope you all love it. Adding to my pride and respect of Evgenia’s courage, nearly a million listeners (mostly Brits) will likely hear ads for this episode across the Goalhanger network.
Give how much I value Evgenia’s perspective and the issues we had under discussion, I thought to focus this week’s substack on it exclusively. This extra content should help Orderers get a little bit a look behind the curtain into how our podcast episodes are made and the kind of questions we think about asking our guests.
Further Background on the Episode:
In April 2022, undeterred by his previous two poisonings, Russian opposition politician, historian, and free speech advocate Vladimir Kara-Murza made the incredibly courageous decision to re-enter Russia – despite his known opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two months earlier. What happened next was as tragic as it was predictable. A year later Vladimir was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Last Monday, he disappeared from the Siberian penal colony where he was being held, only much later re-emerging in solitary confinement in a different prison.
In this episode of Disorder, we speak to Evgenia Kara-Murza, a Russian human rights activist and Vladimir’s wife.
Evgenia shares her perspectives about her upbringing in Russia’s Far East, how her husband was imprisoned while working to improve the country, and how what is happening within Russia “hurts” her deeply. She also unpacks how Western leaders bear significant responsibility for the direction taken by the regime of Vladimir Putin – to her mind choosing cowardice and to make money over the safeguarding of human rights. Evgenia finishes the interview talking about how already democratic countries need to stay alert and safeguard their rights and freedoms. To her, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown: democracy is under threat – globally. Listen Here.
SETTING THE STAGE:
The Enduring Disorder has made kidnappings and human rights violations par for the course in our global politics, but no where on earth does the State use punitive torture and the fear of assassination or arbitrary imprisonment as a deterrent against pro-democracy advocacy, or against government transparency in general, as sinisterly as Putin’s Russia.
The USSR may have invented the Gulag and the Tzars may have had their penal colonies, but Putin has brought punishment, torture, and arbitrary arrest of political opponents to a new level.
We discussed this phenomenon in our previous Disorder episode with former Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ). And back in that episode he mentions the case of Vladimir Kara Murza: an opposition politician, journalist, and broadcaster, who not only was highlighting corruption in Putin’s Russia but was helping American and British lawmakers craft the legal framework to hold Putin’s Thugs and Oligarchs to account. In fact, Vladimir engaged in successful lobbying of foreign governments and institutions to impose sanctions on Russia and individual Russians for human rights violations. And he did so from the point of view of being a Russian patriot rather than a tool of Western influence. It was that Vladimir succeeded in imposing real costs on Putin’s cronies that has made him a "personal enemy" of the Kremlin.
He also had the belief that a Russian politician needs to be in Russia calling out Putin’s war crimes, kleptocracy and hypocrisy and he wasn’t going to let previous poisonings stop him. He briefed Western lawmakers and then returned to Russia right after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine to continue his work of trying to shed light on the injustices of Russian actions. For speaking the truth, he was sentenced in Russia to 25 years for high treason in a politically motivated case. We had the distinct honour at the Disorder pod to be interviewing his wife, Evegnia Kara Murza. She is the Advocacy Director of the Free Russia Foundation. A trained translator and interpreter she has deployed those skills as a campaigner and human rights activist and has recently won the 2023 Magnitsky Awards for Courage Under Fire. Evgenia ensures the continuation of her husband’s decades-long work as a Russian politician who believes that a free and democratic Russia is possible and advocates for multilateral oversight mechanisms to hold the Russian government to account over violating its international commitments on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, and on establishing personal accountability for Kremlin officials complicit in corruption and human rights abuses. She is part of FRF’s global campaign for solidarity with Russian anti-war and prodemocracy activists both inside and outside of the country and continues her husband’s work of being a voice of political prisoners in the Russian Federation.
In this Episode, we drew on her experience working on human rights issues around the world to talk about why democracy seems to be on the backfoot in so many places, what more we could and should be doing to help democracy activists and a real allies abroad, and how the West is currently failing to punch with its full force to hold leaders like Vladimir Putin accountable for their war crimes.
Further background on Vladimir and Evgenia Kara-Murza:
Sometimes the man (or the woman) is the message.
Vladimir’s recent profile in The Atlantic:
A profile on Vladimir by Christian Caryl at the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/28/vladimir-kara-murza-jailed-putin-russia/
A profile on Vladimir by Meduza:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/13/a-dissident-from-a-book
A few of Vladimir's articles (we apologize if you don’t have WaPo subscription and can’t access, we are in the same boat):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/30/kara-murza-navalny-russia-prison/
Evgenia’s address to the UN Human Rights Council:
Evgenia’s interview for The Time:
https://time.com/6280513/evgenia-kara-murza-interview-russia/
Evgenia’s input on the creation of offices for hostage affairs for the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/03/hostages-abroad-government-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe/
Here are some questions we asked Evgenia but the questions and answers ended up on the cutting room floor (not covered in the episode so we are sharing here):
What could a post-Putin Russia look like… would it continue to be a far-flung empire or would it require more decentralization or federalism?
Now for a non-sequitur about the role of Jews in the fall of the Soviet Union (the refusniks) and in anti-Putin, Pro-democracy dissent today. Is there a continuity? Your husband is half Jewish and Mikhail Khodorovsky who created and funds the Free Russia Foundation is also half Jewish… Given how few Jews remain in Russia, can we speak of a unique role played by Jews in the pro-democratic movement inside Russia over the last twenty years. And what about Armenians and those of partial Armenian origin who are also very outspoken dissenters against Putin? And the fascinating example of those are BOTH and draw on both traditions like Chess Champion and probably the most important Putin Opponent in the West World Gary Kasparov who is actually Jewish on his father’s side and Armenian on his mothers… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov Can we speak of unique demands and traditions of anti-dictatorial protest by Jews and Armenians against Russian despotism in all its forms?
COURAGE/HUMAN RIGHTS/YOUR HUSBAND’S LEGACY:
· It is difficult for most people to fathom how much your husband or Alexei Navalny have risked to fight for their cause and the underlying logic of their decisions to return to Russia once they left. Or to return to Russia even after they had previously been poisoned. I mean it is just unfathomable for most of us to grasp how could they do it. How could they care so much about their cause and justice and truth that they were willing to risk (or face the near certitude of) life imprisonment or even death for it. From your perspective if you were addressing someone from Nottingham or Maryland and trying to explain your husband’s or Navalny’s situation how would you explain what drives such people to such courageous acts of selfless bravery? From where do they derive their moral courage and tolerance for self-sacrifice? What can we learn from this for the rest of us?
· I believe we cannot confront the disorder globally without cadres of committed activists willing to put their lives on the line to order the disorder. People willing to stand up for principles and face down entrenched interests. Can you tell us any personal stories about some of the people you met during your time working with other families of dissidents to help us understand the risks activists take to fight for freedom, and why they do it… and what wisdom can be distilled for Americans trying to stand up to Trump… or young people trying to work against climate change… how can our people get the courage to act before it is too late… and learn to act in an effective and coordinate way?
· Might there be massive anti-Putin protests if there was an economic downturn or is that nearly impossible because dissent has been silenced and the police apparatus is so strong?
· Do Western policy makers sufficiently get the symbolic and practical meaning of your husband’s case? how much support are you and your husband getting from UK, US and EU - and what else might you like them to be doing to try to pressure the Russian government?
BIG PICTURE
· How has the Magnitsky act been used – has it been effective? Are other countries adopting similar measures?
· What legal framework would you like to see in the democratic world about preventing the ill-gotten gains from the autocratic world being spent in the democratic world? Are there other legal frameworks afoot that could be used.
· How effective is the principle of universal jurisdiction. Could it be used to bring someone like Vladimir Putin to account for war crimes and atrocities? Will it ever be possible to hold someone like Putin accountable? What about all of the jailers, penal colony workers, party apparatchiks are they guilty like Nazi functionaries were guilty and will need to be tried and penalized when putin falls or dies?
· What are the lessons learned from Western mishandling of Russia? How should we deter China differently? Can the West in fact deter China from cracking down hard on its pro-democracy advocates do we lack the tools?
· Think of all the people being put on trial in Hong Long, for example. Jimmy Lai being a well known example; Nathan Law in absentia. How can western policy try to avert / deter these kind of Chinese actions against campaigners and opposition figures that Western and international law would consider ‘innocent’ and encourage those who share our values living in autocracies to stand up and be heard knowing that the West will have their back?
ORDERING THE DISORDER
If there were automatic sanctions for officials of autocracies who staged show trials of activists like your husband who have committed no crime… would that work to deter regimes from imprisoning dissidents? What magic bullet solutions would you propose to deter these regimes from turning the most promising opposition leaders into political prisoners?
Let’s talk a bit of Poland. The Poles have finally taken back control from their neopopulist , anti-woke, anti-gay, anti-international collaboration, and anti-truth overlords what lessons does Donald Tusk’s victory hold for Americans and Brits trying to face down our home grown Neopopulism and culture wars? Can Russians and Ukrainians draw any lessons from developments in Poland?
That is it for today’s substack… as I said this is just a very simple way of sharing some more content from the pod and allowing our superfans to have a bit more insights into how we make the pod… we are evolving the format and hope you will enjoy more future iterations.