In the democratic world people who oppose the government or political parties are called in the U.K. the opposition. Certainly not given the title of dissident.
However the opposite is true in totalitarian regimes such as the Russian Federation. Opposition politicians in Russia are classed as enemies of the state and dealt with accordingly. Usually assassination is the preferred method silencing the opposing political forces for ever.
So brittle are totalitarian regimes that opposing political forces can unsettle the people and cause the downfall of the incumbent dictator. Inspirational politicians can stir up trouble and cause dissatisfaction with the dictators control over a tightly controlled disaffected population.
Therefore the dissident is always a threat to the dictator telling truth to power. After the fall of the communist Soviet Union. When Boris Yeltsin became the new Russian Federation President he was breath of fresh air. Anything seemed possible with the new fledgling democracy.
Problem with Boris Yeltsin was his heavy alcohol drink problem. It was so bad on many of his official occasion’s it got the better of him. He’d embarrass himself and his guests and his nation. Because he was completely drunk!
Quite funny to watch and certainly he was a larger than life character. He’d taken on a massive job after the fall of the Soviet Union. Maybe it was his pressure release with the consumption of alcohol. However there is an alcohol problem in Russia which is due to the cheap cost of vodka. I think it’s designed to control the masses and dull their senses.
Boris Yeltsin had a very special relationship with Boris Namtsov. He was his heir apparent. Who was Boris Namtsov?
Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was born in Sochi in 1959. Nemtsov was raised in Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod. From 1976 to 1981, Nemtsov studied physics at State University of Gorky in the city of Gorky, receiving a degree in 1981.
Aged 25 in 1985, he submitted his dissertation for a PhD in Physics and Mathematics from the State University of Gorky. Until 1990, he worked as a research fellow at the Radiophysical Research Institute, and produced more than 60 academic publications related to quantum physics, thermodynamicsand acoustics.
Boris Namtsov had a brilliant mind and was certainly an intellectual. He drifted into the political scene as a democratic force. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Nemtsov organized a protest movement in his hometown which effectively prevented construction of a nuclear-fired boiler plant in the region.
In 1989, Nemtsov unsuccessfully ran for the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies on a reform platform which for the time was quite radical, promoting ideas such as multiparty democracy and private enterprise. In Russia’s first free elections of 1990, he ran for the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republicrepresenting Gorky, later renamed Nizhny Novgorod. Nemtsov was elected, the only non-communist candidate. He defeated twelve others. Once in Parliament he joined the “Reform Coalition” and “Centre-Left” political groups.
In the Russian parliament, Nemtsov was on the legislative committee, working on agricultural reform and the liberalization of foreign trade. In this position he met Boris Yeltsin, who was impressed with his work. During the October 1991 attempted coup by Soviet hardliners, Nemtsov vehemently supported the president and stood by him during the entire clash. After those events, Yeltsin rewarded Nemtsov’s loyalty with the position of presidential representative in his home region of Nizhny Novgorod.
In November 1991, Yeltsin appointed him Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. He was re-elected to that position by popular vote in December 1995. His tenure was marked by a wide-ranging, chaotic free market reform program nicknamed “Laboratory of Reform” for Nizhny Novgorod and resulted in significant economic growth for the region. Nemtsov’s reforms won praise from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who visited Nizhny Novgorod in 1993.
From the very outset of Nemtsov’s tenure as governor, according to Serge Schmemann, Nemtsov “embarked on a whirlwind campaign to transform the region, drawing enthusiastic support from a host of Western agencies.” Although the province was closed to foreigners for years and “there wasn’t even enough paper money for the privatization program”, he was optimistic about Moscow’s future and consequently “pushed ahead on his own, even issuing his own money – chits, to be eventually exchanged for rubles that came to be known as ‘Nemtsovki.'” Nemtsov very openly looked to the West as a model for Russia’s future.
Nemtsov, Schmemann observed, adopted the westernized title “Governor” rather than the Russian “Head of Administration”.
In December 1993, Nemtsov was elected to the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament. During the election campaign he was backed by Russia’s Choice and Yabloko, which were then the principal liberal parties in the country. He became a member of the government in charge of the energy industry.
In March 1997, Nemtsov was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, with special responsibility for reform of the energy sector. He was tasked with restructuring the monopolies and reforming the housing and social sectors.
He became popular with the public and appeared favoured to become President of Russia in 2000. Boris Yeltsin introduced him to Bill Clinton as his chosen successor.
In the summer of 1997, opinion polls gave Nemtsov over 50% support as a potential presidential candidate.His political career, however, suffered a blow in August 1998 following the crash of the Russian stock-market and the ensuing economic crisis.
Nemtsov had worked in Moscow’s “White House” for only a year and a half, although he stated he had some success. He ended the corrupt act of stashing budget funds in commercial banks.
He also managed to introduce an anti-corruption law for all state purchases in the government. He also helped to end the illegal export of raw materials and made oil sales more transparent. “And, most importantly, while I was the minister responsible for fuel and energy, oil was at barely 10 US dollars per barrel, and still we managed to save Russia”.
Things were difficult, what with social unrest, strikes, the war in Chechnya, the ‘default’, and still – let me repeat – we did save Russia.”
As part of Anatoly Chubais‘ economic team, Nemtsov was forced to resign his position of Deputy Prime Minister.
After the dismissal of Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin in 1998,Nemtsov was reappointed Deputy Prime Minister, but resigned shortly afterwards when Yeltsin dissolved the government. According to The Economist, Nemtsov, unlike many other top government figures, “emerged from the troubled 1990s with his reputation intact.”
As early as 1998, Nemtsov had a personal website on RuNet. Nemtsov.rusought to provide information to its users that was not available elsewhere and also was one of the first attempts by a politician to establish two-way communication with an audience.
In August 1999, Nemtsov became one of the co-founders of the Union of Right Forces, a then new liberal-democratic coalition which received nearly 6 million votes, or 8.6% of the vote, in the parliamentary elections in December 1999.
Nemtsov himself was elected to the State Duma, or lower house of Parliament, and became its Deputy Speaker in February 2000. In May 2000, Sergei Kiriyenko resigned and Nemtsov was elected leader of the party and its parliamentary group.
Over 70% of delegates at the Union of Rightist Forces congress in May 2001 confirmed him as party leader. According to Nemtsov, the Union “always consisted of two factions, a Nemtsov faction and a Chubais faction”, with the former “based on principles and ideology whereas the Chubais faction was pragmatic, existing by the rules of realpolitik.”
In 2002, his name appeared on a list of several individuals the hostage-takers during the Moscow theater hostage crisis were willing to speak to directly. Nemtsov did not take part in the negotiations and later said that Putin had ordered him not to go.
By 2003, Nemtsov was in a difficult political position – while he vehemently believed President Vladimir Putin‘s policies were rolling back democracy and civic freedoms in Russia, he needed to collaborate with the powerful co-chairman of the Union of Rightist Forces, Anatoly Chubais, who favoured a conciliatory line towards the Kremlin.
In the parliamentary elections of December 2003, the Union of Rightist Forces platform headed by both Nemtsov and Chubais received just 2.4 million votes, 4% of the total, and thus fell short of the 5% threshold necessary to enter Parliament and as a result lost its seats.
In January 2004, Nemtsov resigned from the party leadership. He became Chairman of the Council of Directors of Neftianoi, an oil company, and also a political advisor to Ukrainian president Viktor Yuschenko.
Boris fell out earlier with Boris Yeltsin, maybe he got disillusioned with the politics and utter corruption in Moscow. He then became as we would say an opposition figure or dissident against Putin’s corrupt regime.
He criticized Putin’s government as an increasingly authoritarian, undemocratic regime, highlighting widespread embezzlement and profiteering ahead of the Sochi Olympics, and Russian political interference and military involvement in Ukraine.
After 2008, Nemtsov published in-depth reports detailing the corruption under Putin, which he connected directly with the President. As part of the same political struggle, Nemtsov was an active organizer of and participant in Dissenters’ Marches, Strategy-31 civil actions and rallies “For Fair Elections”.
Nemtsov was assassinated on 27 February 2015, beside his Ukrainian partner Anna Durytska, on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, with four shots fired from the back. At the time of his assassination, he was in Moscow helping to organize a rally against the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the Russian financial crisis.
Boris was first of many assassinated by Putin. Be it political dissidents or powerful oligarchs not kowtowing to Putin’s corrupt practices of financial kick backs. List is long let’s look at another young charismatic brave opponent of Putin’s tyrannical regime.
Alexei Navalny
After Alexei Navany’s death, I watched the YouTube video called Navalny about his poisoning with the deadly nerve agent novichok. Novichok; is a family of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993.
The nerve agent was deposited on his underpants. I not fully sure how the Russian assassin got access to them? Did he leave them for laundering in his hotel facilities? Knowing that his life was under constant threat you would have thought he wouldn’t have chanced leaving them with the hotel laundry? However he might have left them drying in his hotel bathroom. Agents got into his room and deposited the nerve agent? It was deposited on the seam of the cod piece so it could enter his blood stream.
He had gone out to Tomsk to speak with his supports about local corruption. His followers loved him for his courage and bravery speaking out against Vladimir Putin systematic corruption. Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights.
He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny had his own website Navalny.com and YouTube channel Алексей
Навальный. With 6.39 million subscribers.
On his return trip from Tomsk he fell ill on the plane and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. He was rushed to the Omsk clinical hospital. On the plane he was in great pain screaming out whilst in his seat! He went into a coma and had to be put on a ventilator.
A private medical plane was sent from Germany to evacuate Navalny from Russia for treatment at the Charité Hospital in Berlin. Initially the Omsk hospital doctors said he was too sick to be released and flown to Germany. It transpires that the hospital was trying to remove traces of the Novichok from his body.
On 24 August, the doctors in Germany made an announcement, confirming that Navalny had been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor. Later the hospital specialist said Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok.
On 14 December, a joint investigation by The Insider and Bellingcat in co-operation with CNN and Der Spiegel was published, which implicated agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in Navalny’s poisoning.
There’s a CNN YouTube film called Navalny detailing the poisoning and his anti corruption work. His last YouTube film video was called Putin Palace the Worlds Biggest Bribe. The palace and its vineyards is absolutely massive on the Black Sea not far from Sail Rock near Sredizemnomorskiy
Dom Na Svetloy. On the western Russian Black Sea coastline.
The film Navalny is a gripping story line of Navany with his wife children. The dissidents courage to go back to Russia after his poisoning knowing it could be to his demise is inspirational.
He was extremely articulate and intelligent. He had two beautiful children and beautiful wife Yulia. Handsome tall with vivid blue eyes he was a political force only still young man in his 40’s. Navalny didn’t pull any punches regarding Putin and his massive corruption of the state.
With the help of Christo Grozor chief investigator of Belincat and Navalny pretending to be FSB special investigator he made direct contact with the assassins. One actually spilt the beans. Confessed to how they went about the attempted assassination. Amazing piece of detective work by Christo through telephone records and aircraft movements.
Film shows them publishing the story and the film in collaboration with CNN and Der Spiegel.
The guy had amazing courage. The whole film had slightly surreal feeling about it. He was getting millions of views on tick-tock and his own YouTube channel but he knew his life was completely on the line. He had to go back to Russia why? To prove to the Russian people that he wasn’t afraid of dying and neither should they be afraid of Putin and his corrupt government regime either. He acted like a man from a video game a super hero. The man dedicated his life to his country to free Russia from the choke hold of an utterly corrupt regime of Putin and his acolytes. He was very politically savvy had everything going for him intellect good looks and a brilliant communicator.
Strangely whilst in Ukraine they didn’t seem to like Navalny because he had stated that Crimea should be part of the Russian Federation. He never mentioned Ukraine in any of his speeches. Ukrainians were suspicious of him and his motives. He had family connections from Chernobyl district. Putin couldn’t bring himself to mention his name whilst speaking about him.
If there were fair and honest elections in Russia I am sure Navalny would have beaten Putin.
Finally I could do a whole blog post on Putins raise to power from a lowly KGB officer in Dresden in the Soviet Union East Germany. His move from St Petersburg from KGB Colonel into the murky politics of St Petersburg and to his ultimate power as President and Dictator of the Russian Federation. Like Adolf Hitler he has become megalomaniacal dictator of his nation. Now he’s on a crusade to remake the Soviet Union. He will fail like most dictators before him.
Sad that Russia went down this path of self destruction. I believe Boris Namtsov would have been a wonderful leader and democrat and brought Russia out of its dark ages. But it was not be!