Surreal Freedom: The Journey of Vladimir Kara-Murza

“At first, I thought they were going to shoot me; then it felt like I was living in a gripping film.” Speaking in Berlin, Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza reflected on his release from a Russian prison this summer, which marked the largest prisoner exchange between Western nations and Moscow since the Cold War ended. In a brick structure reminiscent of a medieval castle, he recounted his experiences during his imprisonment in the Siberian city of Omsk and shared his aspirations to help rebuild Russia from afar.

Kara-Murza may be relatively safe now, yet upon leaving Russia, he received a cautionary message not to divulge “too much.” “You know what can happen otherwise,” he was warned. However, now that he is a free man, he expressed to his supporters in the dimly lit, dungeon-like hall that the entire experience feels simply surreal.

The circumstances surrounding his detention and release evoke memories of Russia in the 1950s. During the twilight years of Josef Stalin’s regime, the so-called “intelligentsia”—Russia’s intellectual elite, to which Kara-Murza’s ancestors belonged—met clandestinely to discuss topics that were strictly forbidden, risking banishment to the gulag.

In April 2022, he was arrested and handed a 25-year sentence for treason and spreading false information about the Russian military. At that moment, he did not believe he would ever see freedom again.

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“In prison, my only companions were cats,” Kara-Murza shared, illustrating his daily life in solitary confinement, where he spent the majority of his two-and-a-half-year sentence. Throughout his imprisonment, he managed to speak with his wife only once and his children just twice. Confined to a minuscule cell, he often found himself staring at a blank wall. “You can go mad,” he lamented. “You start to forget words.” To avoid losing his sanity, he ordered a book from the prison’s meager library and embarked on learning Spanish.

Free at Last

When he was unexpectedly escorted out of prison, Kara-Murza’s first instinct was that the guards were about to execute him. However, the reality was much different. From Tomsk, he was flown directly to Moscow and then to Ankara. It wasn’t until he and the other prisoners were escorted to buses bound for a Moscow airport that he realized he was part of a prisoner exchange. There, he encountered familiar faces, including Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who had also been freed. “You look like crap,” Yashin remarked as they reunited after two and a half years apart. (Yashin was present in the front row among the audience in Berlin, grinning as Kara-Murza recounted his ordeal.)

Upon arriving in Ankara, a woman handed Kara-Murza a phone. On the other end was none other than US President Joe Biden. “During my time in solitary confinement, I had minimal contact with anyone. I had barely spoken a word in Russian for two and a half years, let alone in English,” Kara-Murza chuckled. Hearing the voices of his wife and children again for the first time in ages overwhelmed him. It was a moment that felt utterly surreal.

Old Mistakes

Kara-Murza was recently welcomed to Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The two engaged in discussions about Russia’s future and the thousands of political prisoners who remain incarcerated under dire conditions in Russia and Belarus. He emphasized his desire to help build up Russian civil society from exile, aiming to give a voice to those Russians who “do not wish to inhabit an archaic, isolated authoritarian pseudo-empire, but rather a civilized European state.”

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing,” Kara-Murza recalled, quoting Alexei Navalny. “I stand firmly behind every word. Every totalitarian regime only exists with the complicity of ordinary people.” But how did Russia arrive at its current state of repression?

According to Kara-Murza, this is the result of two significant mistakes made in the 1990s. One mistake originated within Russia, while the other came from the West. He asserted that Russia failed to confront its past. “If evil is not condemned and punished, it will inevitably return,” Kara-Murza explained. “Countries that have successfully transitioned from totalitarianism have undergone a moral reckoning. Germany was compelled to do so after 1945, allowing people to examine archives and confront their history.” Unfortunately, this reckoning has yet to occur in Russia.

The second mistake, he argued, was made by the West. Other Eastern European nations found it significantly easier to recover from their Soviet pasts, forming democracies, because they received strong external support. They were welcomed back into Europe. However, during the 1990s, the West was not prepared to accept and integrate a democratic Russia.

“Russia must certainly learn from its past mistakes. However, it is equally vital that the West is prepared to embrace a new, democratic Russia that has learned from its errors. Russia is inextricably linked to Europe—both culturally and mentally.”

“If our vision is a peaceful, free, and united Europe, then this can only be achieved with the participation of a peaceful and liberated Russia.”

Death Would be Too Lenient a Punishment

Russia is a multi-ethnic nation, yet it has yet to transform into “a truly federal state,” Kara-Murza emphasized. Many Russians harbor fears that the country could disintegrate, similar to the Soviet Union, which leads them to support authoritarian leadership. “I don’t believe such fragmentation will occur,” Kara-Murza asserted. He suspects that stronger regulatory mechanisms and laws will emerge to protect the identities of ethnic minorities within the nation.

Regions should have the right to speak their native languages and teach them to their children in schools, he contended. “Russia is currently pursuing a centralized policy. This is fundamentally misguided.”

For Russia to achieve these freedoms and more, Vladimir Putin must relinquish his grip on power. “Perhaps Russia will only find freedom when he finally dies,” someone from the audience remarked. However, Kara-Murza expressed a desire for Putin to remain alive. “I want to see him in the dock. I want him to be held accountable for all he has done over the past 25 years.”

“I know he will answer for his sins,” Kara-Murza declared, raising his index finger towards the sky, “but I want him to be held accountable here too. He must take responsibility for Nemtsov, for Navalny, for the Ukrainian children who lost their lives. Death would be too lenient a punishment.”

Truth and Hope

Kara-Murza believes that everyone can contribute to a free Russia. “There is ample work for all of us,” he promised. “It is essential to maintain dialogue, to engage with people, and to persuade them so that when Russia is ready for change, everything that has been destroyed in the past 25 years can be restored.”

“We cannot afford to sever our connection to our beloved Russia—the Russia of Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny.”

Meanwhile, Kara-Murza dreams of visiting Tomsk, the city where he endured such a long imprisonment. “It’s a peculiar dream,” he admitted. Despite having traveled to many Siberian cities, he had never seen Tomsk outside the confines of his tiny prison cell, where he received thousands of letters each month. “In their letters, people often asked me why I remained so optimistic and hopeful. I always replied that I don’t merely hope; I know. The truth is on our side.”