Protest in the time of war

Aug 15 2023 The Washington Post

Many Russians refuse to become silent accomplices to Putin’s war — at great cost

by Vladimir Kara-Murza

PRETRIAL DETENTION CENTER NO. 5, MOSCOW

At the start of this process, I expected my experience to be similar to that of the dissidents of the 1960s and 1970s whose struggles against Soviet totalitarianism I have studied and documented. But Russia’s regress under Putin has taken a much more dramatic pace. From the total secrecy of the proceedings to the three-judge panel that seemed to intentionally echo the “troikas” of the 1930s to the language of the prosecutor, who called me “an enemy that must be punished,” my trial had much more in common with the handling of “enemies of the people” under Joseph Stalin than of dissidents under Leonid Brezhnev. The sentence completed the parallel: Before me, the last time political prisoners in this country had received 25-year terms was at the end of Stalin’s reign.