A conversation with Natan Sharansky about Russia and Ukraine, repression and freedom
Editor’s Note: What follows is an expanded version of a piece that appears in the current issue of National Review.
Natan Sharansky spent 405 days in a punishment cell. This was considered “a kind of record,” he says. A punishment cell is small, cold, dark. You get three pieces of bread and three cups of water a day. You are completely isolated. “According to the experts, you’re supposed to go crazy after 15 days,” says Sharansky.
He fears that Alexei Navalny will break his record. “He definitely will,” on the current pace. Sharansky was in prison for nine years. Navalny has been in prison for only about two and a half years. And already he has spent almost 200 days in a punishment cell.
Sharansky was a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag, from 1977 to 1986. Navalny is generally regarded as the leader of the Russian opposition — the political opposition to the dictator, Vladimir Putin. He was imprisoned in January 2021.
The previous opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, was murdered in February 2015.
To many people around the world, Natan Sharansky has been a hero for a long time. He was born “Anatoly Shcharansky” in 1948. A math-and-science whiz, he attended the “Soviet MIT,” i.e., the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. When he turned to dissidence, he came under the wing of a great scientist who had done the same: Andrei Sakharov.
In 1976, Sakharov, Shcharansky, and several others founded the Moscow Helsinki Group. Its purpose was to monitor human rights. The Kremlin forced the group out of existence in 1982 — but it was revived in 1989, under glasnost. The group functioned right up until January of this year, when the Kremlin banned it. Putin has banned civil society at large.
After his imprisonment, Sharansky wrote a stunning memoir, Fear No Evil. He has lived all these years in Israel, where he has been a politician and writer.
In the Brezhnev ’70s, he was a young dissident, and he has lived to see Russia extensively re-Sovietized. He is amazed at the speed with which such a thing can happen. At how quickly a country can be plunged back into darkness. In some respects, he says, Russia under Putin is worse than under Brezhnev.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, another Russian oppositionist, has been sentenced to 25 years for “high treason.” This was after he criticized the war on Ukraine. You have to go back to Stalin, says Sharansky, to find 25-year sentences.
By the way, Kara-Murza was lieutenant to the murdered Nemtsov.
What’s more, Putin’s Kremlin has used poison against its critics — an “unconventional weapon,” as Sharansky says. Many have been murdered by this weapon. Among them is Yuri Shchekochikhin, a journalist and legislator. Kara-Murza has survived two murder attempts by poison — in 2015 and 2017. Navalny has survived one, in 2020.
In other respects, the situation is less bad today than before, says Sharansky. Putin has not yet closed emigration. You can still leave the country if you want, and have the means to do so. “In the days of our struggle,” Sharansky recounts, “the country was really a prison for everybody.”
Also, political prisoners have lawyers, through whom they can communicate to the outside world, and through whom the outside world can communicate to the prisoners, to a degree. In the past month, Sharansky has received letters from both Kara-Murza and Navalny. They have read his memoir and other such books, and drawn inspiration from them.
To be a lawyer, however, can be dangerous. In April, Kara-Murza’s chief lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, left Russia after receiving a tip that he, too, would be arrested.
Before they were imprisoned, both Kara-Murza and Navalny were abroad, for medical treatment and other reasons. Both of them went back to Russia, knowing they would be arrested, imprisoned, and possibly killed. Sharansky understands them very well. Dissidents in the Soviet Union were always taking actions that they knew would lead to terrible fates. They did it because someone had to show courage. Someone had to stand up to the tyranny — to disturb it a little, or a lot.
After Navalny returned, a reporter asked Sharansky something like this: “Why did he go back? Was he so naïve as to think he would not be arrested?” The reporter herself was naïve — unaware of what is in the mind, spine, and heart of such people.
Sharansky is a friend of Jimmy Lai, the entrepreneur and democracy activist who is a political prisoner in Hong Kong. He talked with Lai in 2020, before Lai was sent to prison. Lai was then 72 (a year older than Sharansky). He could have hopped on a private plane and gone into safety abroad. He refused, however, thinking that his place was with his fellow democracy activists, even if it was prison.
This is how Kara-Murza, Navalny, and the other Russian prisoners feel, says Sharansky. “They knew they would be in prison for the rest of their lives — or until victory. There are things more important to them than their personal survival.”
During his nine years in the Gulag, Sharansky had a great asset — his wife, Avital, who was free in Israel and campaigning for him all over the world. Sharansky has long said, “The biggest mistake the KGB made was to let Avital out of the country.” The KGB thought they could break the couple apart, because they were young and impatient, and one would be in a faraway land and the other would be in prison. They did not break the couple apart. Natan and Avital did not see each other for twelve years and were utterly at one.
Kara-Murza has a wife, Evgenia. Navalny has a wife, Yulia. They too are in the Free World, campaigning for their husbands. Avital Sharansky has spoken with Evgenia Kara-Murza. Her main message is this: It is the job of the spouse to keep the name of the prisoner alive in the public consciousness. It will be easier at first, much harder as time goes on.
The better known a political prisoner is, the more awkward it is for a dictatorship to kill him.
How does a prisoner keep sane, especially in solitary confinement or a punishment cell? In the course of our conversation, I tell Sharansky about my friend Félix Maradiaga, who was a political prisoner in Nicaragua for a year and eight months. He was released in February of this year. Félix did a variety of things, mentally. He remembered as much of the Bible as he could. He tried to reconstruct movies he had seen: their plots, their scripts. He even composed talks in his head, to be delivered later.
Sharansky, when a youth, was a chess whiz, in addition to a math-and-science whiz. “It was my big hobby from the age of five,” he says. “I discovered that this was a world in which the Soviets could not control your thoughts. I also discovered that I could beat people who were taller than I was, which everyone was.” During his days — his years — in prison, he played a lot of chess, in his head. It was critical to keeping him sane.
“I always recommend: If you’re thinking of going to prison, learn how to play chess, and marry someone who will fight for you.”
In a society under dictatorship, Sharansky says — has long said — there are three groups. On one end, there are true believers in the dictatorship. Sincere supporters. On the other end, there are outright dissidents, ready to sacrifice life and limb in a struggle for freedom. Both of these groups are very small. In between, there are “double thinkers” (a term originating in Orwell). They say one thing with their mouths but harbor other thoughts privately. They are governed by fear. When the double thinkers lose their fear and move into dissent — the dictatorship is finished.
That is the state of Russia today, says Sharansky. The group of double thinkers is massive. It is very, very dangerous to dissent. But once the double thinkers tip . . .
Very few people thought the Soviet Union would collapse, Sharansky notes. In 1970, Andrei Amalrik — who would be one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group — published an essay titled “Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?” (the Orwell year). “Everyone thought this was crazy,” Sharansky says. “People thought the Soviet Union was forever. Every American leader believed it — until Reagan.”
Reagan and Sharansky admired each other enormously.
If a dictatorship is to fall, says Sharansky, it is imperative that people on the outside — people who are free — stand in solidarity with people who are risking their lives inside. Free World governments must not allow the dictatorship, the persecutors, to conduct international business as usual.
In recent days, many of us have been quoting Vladimir Kara-Murza’s final statement in court. Natan Sharansky quotes from it too. This is part of what Kara-Murza said, from the defendant’s cage:
. . . I do not ask this court for anything. I know the verdict. I knew it a year ago when I saw people in black uniforms and black masks running after my car in the rearview mirror. Such is the price for speaking up in Russia today.
But I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when at the official level it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who kindled and unleashed this war, rather than those who tried to stop it, will be recognized as criminals.
This day will come as inevitably as spring follows even the coldest winter. And then our society will open its eyes and be horrified by what terrible crimes were committed on its behalf. From this realization, from this reflection, the long, difficult but vital path toward the recovery and restoration of Russia, its return to the community of civilized countries, will begin.
Even today, even in the darkness surrounding us, even sitting in this cage, I love my country and believe in our people. I believe that we can walk this path.
Over and over, Natan Sharansky refers to the Ukraine war as “barbaric aggression.” And he answers a sensitive question I put to him: Is the war a “Putin thing” or a “Russian thing”? Is it the ongoing crime of one man, chiefly, or an expression of Russia itself?
The blame lies with Putin, says Sharansky. It is true, however, that he has brought some number along. A leader can appeal to better angels and worse angels — and Putin is a master appealer to the worst.
Sharansky recalls what Putin has said, more than once: The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Sharansky had an opportunity to contradict him, directly. While chairman of the Jewish Agency (from 2009 to 2018), he met with Putin several times. “The greatest tragedy was the Holocaust,” Sharansky said.
In any event, Putin has a thirst for empire, Sharansky explains, as Russian and Soviet leaders past have had. His measure of success is: How many lands have you collected? How much bigger have you made Russia? Have you reacquired land that was lost? Does the world fear you?
Before launching his all-out assault on Ukraine, Putin told Russians two things, mainly. (1) The Ukrainian government is a Nazi regime. You defeated the Nazis before, and you are called upon to do it again. (2) Ukraine is not a real country but belongs in Russia.
Sharansky, when he heard this, knew that war — “barbaric aggression” — was inevitable.
Putin, he says, has tried to turn his personal crusade into a national cause. The degree to which he has succeeded is hard to ascertain. Public opinion is tricky in a police state. Sharansky’s impression is: No one really and truly wants the war except for Putin.
Following an age-old Russian and Soviet tradition, Putin has cried, “Encirclement!” He has pretended that the Western wolf is at the door, threatening to devour Russia. Vladimir Bukovsky had something sardonic to say about this.
Bukovsky, you remember, was another important dissident, political prisoner, and memoirist. I interviewed him in 2019, shortly before he died.
“I’ve lived in the West for 40 years,” he said, “and trust me, nobody here gives a damn about Russia.”
Sharansky remembers the Kremlin line from his childhood and young adulthood: We must send tanks to Budapest to save ourselves. We must place missiles on Cuba to save ourselves. We must send tanks to Prague to save ourselves.
And today: If we don’t reconquer Ukraine, the Ukrainians and their Western masters will conquer Russia!
Does the public buy this line? Again, hard to know.
Of one thing, Sharansky is sure: Trying to appease Putin would be foolhardy. If you feed him parts of Ukraine, or parts of Poland, or a Baltic state or two, he will not be sated. He will merely take this as proof that “his strategy or tactics are working,” says Sharansky. The dictator will forge ahead. “So the only way to stop a dictator is to resist. The Western world, finally, is united in its understanding that Putin is a big threat. And we have to resist.”
When Putin declared that Ukraine is not a nation, Sharansky says, he awakened and fortified the Ukrainians’ sense of nation. “They have found their place at the center of history. They have proven that they’re ready to fight for their national identity and for their freedom. And that they are ready to die for these things.”
Furthermore, “they are bringing back to the word ‘nationalism’ its positive meaning.” Sharansky has argued for years that Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state. In 2008, he published a book titled “Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.” The word “nationalism” is hotly controversial in Israel, for understandable reasons.
“By their struggle,” says Sharansky, “the Ukrainians are showing what a good nationalism is. At the same time, Russia demonstrates the worst of nationalism” — the nationalist card played by “a cruel dictator in order to strengthen his grip on the people.”
A final word. “Ukraine is lucky to have a great leader,” says Sharansky. He is talking, of course, about the president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “It is almost an irony of history that this leader is a proud Jew, who connects himself to Jewish culture and to Israel, and who at the same time is an unbelievably strong Ukrainian patriot.” He sets “a great example for the world.”
So does Sharansky, always has.