A phrase has occurred to me: “microscopic dot.” Where does it come from? I will get to that in a moment. In a previous post, I quoted Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman from Georgia, who expressed a common view. Campaigning as a surrogate for Donald Trump in South Carolina, she was asked whether Vladimir Putin was responsible for Alexei Navalny’s death. She said, “I don’t know.” When pressed, she said, “I really could care less.”
I am sure she was being honest.
One day, President Carter was meeting with the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko. As I put it in a post, in 2018,
Carter brought up the case of Anatoly Shcharansky (later Natan Sharansky), the leading refusenik in the Gulag. Gromyko was nonplussed at this. The USSR and the USA had such big fish to fry: nuclear arsenals, the fate of the world. And Carter was bringing up this one zek, this one prisoner. He is but “a microscopic dot,” Gromyko said.
In that post, I commented,
Not to Americans, traditionally. Not to those who prize and honor individuals. These microscopic dots turn out to be the most important things in the world.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a prisoner of Putin’s for ten years. I had an interview with him in 2019 (written up in two installments: here and here). Today, Khodorkovsky wrote about current political prisoners, in grave danger. He said,
I am very worried about Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is not in the best of health after being poisoned twice. I am very worried about Ilya Yashin. . . .
I am worried, of course, about Andrey Pivovarov and Alexey Pichugin. I understand that the regime has been killing, and it has no real reason to stop.
Ilya Yashin managed to write a letter in prison and get it out into the public. The letter has been translated into English by CEPA — the Center for European Analysis. (Find it here.)
Yashin says,
News comes slowly to the camp barrack, and I only learned about the death of Alexey Navalny yesterday. It’s hard to convey my shock. It’s hard to gather my thoughts. The pain and horror are unbearable.
And yet I will not remain silent; I will say what I consider important.
For me, there is no question what happened to Navalny. I have no doubt that he was killed. For three years, Alexey was under the control of the security forces, who, as early as 2020, had organized an unsuccessful attempt on his life. Now, they have brought the matter to an end.
For me, there is no question which individual killed him. I have no doubt that it was Putin. He’s a war criminal. Navalny was his key opponent in Russia and was hated by the Kremlin. Putin had both motive and opportunity.
Further on, Yashin says,
Putin will remain a small man who accidentally gained enormous power. A character who hides in a bunker kills on the sly and holds millions of people hostage to his complexes. And yet, I don’t wish him to die. I dream that he will answer for his crimes not only before God’s tribunal, but also before an earthly court.
Alexey Navalny was my friend. So was Boris Nemtsov. We pursued a common cause and dedicated our lives to making Russia peaceful, free, and happy.
Nemtsov, you will remember, was the leader of the Russian opposition, murdered within sight of the Kremlin in 2015.
One more excerpt, from Ilya Yashin’s letter:
I feel a black emptiness inside. And, of course, I understand the risks to my own safety. I’m behind bars, my life is in Putin’s hands, and it’s in danger. . . .
Standing over Boris’s body in February 2015, I vowed to myself not to be afraid, not to give up, and not to run. Nine years later, mourning Alexey, I can only repeat this oath.
As long as my heart beats in my chest, I will fight tyranny. As long as I live, I will not fear evil. As long as I breathe, I will be with my people.
You will hear people in the Free World say that Vladimir Putin is a Russian patriot, a man who loves and defends his country, no matter what. A certain political type has told me this for years. But true patriotism — true love and defense of country — has been shown by Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny. And is being shown by Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
I will quote something that Kara-Murza wrote in 2018:
One morning in the spring of 2016, I spoke at a breakfast meeting with British members of Parliament who were on an official visit to Moscow. The conversation soon turned to the Magnitsky Act, the path-breaking U.S. measure that targeted individuals responsible for human-rights abuses in Russia. When I urged my interlocutors to pass the same law in Britain, one member of the delegation broke me off and launched into a diatribe: Why on earth, he complained, should the City of London forgo billions in profits because of some “human rights hearsay”?
Our meeting was taking place in the British ambassador’s residence, just a few hundred yards from the bridge where, months earlier, Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down as he walked home after dinner. I was barely able to stand, using a cane, months after my own near-fatal poisoning. I had nothing to say to the honorable gentleman as he lamented the loss of profits.
At that point, FSB agents had tried to kill Kara-Murza only once. They would do so again in 2017 (again, with poison). Kara-Murza is possibly the next on Putin’s list to experience “sudden-death syndrome” in prison.
Remember the “microscopic dots,” who, in so many ways, are very big.