(Dobbs) How Different Is Russia From The USSR?
Navalny’s widow says Putin is “a bloody mobster.” He keeps proving her right.
Russian protestors who turned out in Moscow for the funeral of Alexei Navalny, the anti-Putin politician sentenced to 19 years behind bars for “extremism” who then died mysteriously two weeks ago in a harsh Siberian prison, were not penalized for their protest.
At least not yet. But if history is any guide, there may yet be knocks on the door in the middle of the night and citizens hauled off to undisclosed locations for some sort of punishment.
Russia is an ever-closer clone of the Soviet Union.
Since Putin took power a full quarter century ago, he has slowly but surely carved away at the freedoms Russians only briefly possessed after the Soviet Union’s fall. That includes the freedom to protest, even the freedom to gather without the approval of the government. In my own occasional coverage of the country, I watched those liberties melt away. It is no surprise. Putin once called the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
He is doing his best to bring it back.
So while there were not mass arrests as some had expected at Navalny’s funeral, there were arrests and detentions in the two weeks between his death and his burial.
People were taken away in Moscow simply for laying flowers in Navalny’s memory at the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial to victims of political repression. Two men were sentenced to jail simply for carrying a photograph of Navalny in a backpack.
In a city in southwestern Russia, everyone had to let the police photograph their passports before they could place flowers in the snow at another ad hoc memorial. A bishop in St. Petersburg announced a public prayer event for Navalny but was detained as he left his home and arrested, complete with a mug shot.
Watching from afar, I couldn’t help but see a parallel to an experience I had in Moscow during the bad old days of the Soviet Union.
It was December 10th, 1985, the date designated every year by the United Nations as International Human Rights Day. A small band of Muscovites cryptically telephoned the western media with a message: that they were going to observe Human Rights Day. All they told us was, be at Pushkin Square, not a half mile from the Kremlin, before dark. We didn’t know it yet but they planned to place several bouquets of flowers at the base of a statue, a statue of Alexander Pushkin, a legendary 19th-Century Russian poet who was exiled by the czars for his extremist political views.
That's what you called a protest those days in the Soviet Union. Laying flowers next to a public statue. It was against the law. After all, the government had exclusive responsibility for municipal decor. Therefore, anyone who put down their own floral decor inside the chain encircling the base of the statue was usurping the government, and risking imprisonment. That was the level of human rights in the Soviet Union.
Along with other journalists, a camera crew and I got there in the late afternoon. The beginning of rush hour. It was snowing like crazy. Cold, wet, heavy snow. There were lots of government offices in the area and Moscow's best stores, and people were flowing from the buildings. But for the most part, until a bus actually pulled to a stop, they huddled under awnings and archways while they waited for it, protecting themselves from the blowing snow.
No one just stood around getting wet if they didn't have to.
That's how we first recognized the agents from the KGB, the Soviet Union’s brutal secret police (where Vladimir Putin worked before he became a public official and eventually Russia’s president). They weren’t hard to spot. They were the only ones standing there with two inches of snow on their shoulders. They also were the only ones with exactly the same overcoats. And steel-toed shoes. Government-issue.
They had heard about the human rights observance too. And didn't plan to permit it. So now there were two groups looking at each other. The KGB and the western journalists. Neither side knew yet exactly what was going to happen. Or when. We all just stood there exchanging scowls, knowing that when and if the protesters showed up, we'd be on different sides.
Then, from the crowd boarding a bus emerged a woman. Just one woman in a veiled hat, thick leather boots, a scarf around her neck, and an overcoat. With a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She walked up to the statue almost without notice. She raised her left boot above the level of the chain, which is about a foot-and-a-half above the ground, and stepped in on the other side.
Into forbidden territory. Punishable by imprisonment.
Before the woman could gently lay her flowers on the ground, she was brusquely grabbed from behind. A KGB man for each arm, a third to grab her legs and carry her struggling form to the paddy wagon. The flowers fell pretty much where she probably wanted them, but they didn't get there the way she planned.
Then came another. This time, a man. He clearly had seen what happened to his compatriot, but wasn't deterred. While we were all watching the woman being dragged away, he stepped across the line and suffered the same fate she had. It seemed the KGB really disliked flowers.
Then another, and another after her. It was happening awfully fast. Cameras went on, microphones went up, pencils came out. We saw it as a human rights story. The KGB saw it differently. These protesters were lawbreakers, hooligans, unworthy of attention.
There were more KGB agents than we’d spotted. Three for every dissident, with enough left over to deal with us. They grabbed at one reporter's pad. They grabbed at my jacket. The ABC cameraman with me had KBG men on either side, each of them struggling to pull his camera away. He struggled to keep hold of it. He managed to.
CBS's cameraman didn't. These guys managed to pull his camera out of his grip and it fell to the ground, then a KBG agent gave it a swift kick and put the tip of his government-issue shoe right through the lens.
But the dissidents set out to show the state of human rights in the Soviet Union, and got what they wanted.
How different is it in Russia today?
Here’s an account from two weeks ago, the day after Navalny’s death, from The New York Times:
“For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow’s snow-heaped Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to lay at one of the improvised memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny. The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy wind, were not only a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the mildest dissent can risk detention.
“Some who showed up at the memorial gatherings paid the price. At least 400 people have been detained across Russia since Mr. Navalny’s death was announced on Friday, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. It is the most significant spate of arrests since protests against a general mobilization for the war in Ukraine in Sept. 2022.”
This is Russia under Vladimir Putin today. How different is it from the USSR? For victims like Alexei Navalny— and for Americans like ex-Marine Paul Whelan and the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich, who are stuck in Russian jail cells— any differences are moot. This is the country that the MAGA mob in the United States supports when it opposes more funding for Ukraine. They vitalize Vladimir Putin, they strengthen Russia, and they weaken us.
Navalny’s widow Yulia told the European Parliament last week that Putin is “a bloody mobster.” He keeps proving her right.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
And the footnote: If you approve of Putin today, you’re gonna love Trump in 2025. Really.
A couple decades ago I was invited to a party in Denver that capped off a US tour of a Russian folk dance group. They were wonderful talented people.
Curiously, a large easy chair had been placed in the middle of the living room. In it sat a silent,stern-looking man in a dark suit who did not move a muscle all evening. KGB.