Change will come to Russia
Sep 11 2023 The Washington Post
Change will come to Russia — abruptly and unexpectedly
The article starts with an Editor’s note: On Sept. 4, authorities at the Moscow detention center where Vladimir Kara-Murza has been held for more than a year informed his lawyers that he was no longer in custody there. Though his precise whereabouts are unknown, it is likely that he is being transferred to a Siberian prison where he will be expected to serve out the rest of his 25-year sentence.
“Political change in Russia always comes unexpectedly. The tsarist minister Vyacheslav von Plehve, who before 1904 called for a “small victorious war,” never imagined that it would lead to a revolutionary explosion and force the monarchy to agree to a constitution, parliament and freedom of the press. Vladimir Lenin, complaining to the Swiss Social Democrats in January 1917 that “we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution,” did not suspect that it was only a few weeks away. And absolutely no one in the summer of 1991 expected that by the end of the year the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be banned and the Soviet Union dissolved.
The next time, change will come in exactly the same way — abruptly and unexpectedly. None of us knows the specific moment and specific circumstances, but it will happen in the foreseeable future. The chain of events leading to these changes was started by the regime itself [with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine] in February 2022. It’s only a matter of time.”
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Kara-Murza mentions in the piece that,
The rising strength of the social movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s and the August Revolution of 1991 were driven by anti-totalitarian passion, by the rejection and denial of violence on the part of the Communist Party and its “armed wing.” It is no coincidence that immediately after the victory over the coup plotters [in 1991], a crowd of Muscovites set off to remove the monument to [Soviet secret police founder] Felix Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka Square.
Well today, Felix Dzerzhinsky is back, if only as a statue…
Statue of founder of Soviet secret police unveiled in Moscow
Change will come, but it is not here yet…
