One way that Natan Sharansky survived nine years in the Gulag was to play chess — chess in his head. I thought of him when reading the opening of this article:
Andrei Pivovarov knows there are about 1,000 hours in 42 days.
Doing the math in his head and quietly marking milestones left in his sentence helped the Russian opposition politician survive more than three years in prison, much of it spent in complete isolation.
I have linked to, and quoted, a piece by Dasha Litvinova of the Associated Press. Pivovarov was one of the 16 prisoners released by Russia in the swap of August 1. Of the 16, he had been in prison the longest.
He is now in Germany, with his wife. Writes Litvinova,
The new reality of the world around him, rapidly expanding from a small, solitary cell, overwhelmed him at first. Knowing he won’t see his home country for a long time initially left him depressed.
But it’s getting easier, he said, and “colors get brighter by the day.”
His life in prison, Pivovarov described to Litvinova. It makes for interesting, if difficult, reading. What now for him?
He plans to resume his political activities against the Kremlin in order to make “those who expelled me regret it,” he said.
An impressive man.
• About 25 years ago, I started talking with Cuban democrats who had been expelled — expelled by the Castro dictatorship. They tended to be unhappy, in exile. They felt guilty — guilty that they had left their fellow democrats behind, even if their departure had been involuntary.
This is the way Ilya Yashin feels. He is one of the 16 released. And he, too, is the subject of an article by Dasha Litvinova: here. It begins,
All Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin had with him when he was released from his penal colony in a swap was his toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, his expired passport, and the prison garb he was wearing.
But he has hit the ground running.
Here is a little more:
Unlike many Kremlin critics, Yashin had long refused to leave Russia despite mounting pressure from the authorities, arguing that his voice would sound weaker from abroad. He stayed even after the invasion in 2022 . . .
Yashin is now feeling conflicted — as exiled dissidents have felt for generations and generations.
On one hand, there’s “a massive surge of enthusiasm, massive inspiration, and a lot of joy,” Yashin said. . . .
On the other hand, when he thinks about scores of other people still languishing in prisons and jails in Russia, “it feels like I’m getting hit in the head with a hammer.”
We can imagine, if we try, such hammer blows.
• Another of the 16 is Oleg Orlov, of the Memorial society, age 71. He is the subject of an article by Shaun Walker in the Guardian. Orlov could have left Russia before being imprisoned. But he thought it was his duty to stay.
“Being in prison felt like a continuation of my work,” said Orlov, as reported by Walker. “When I was in prison I felt every day I was doing important work just by being there.”
He wanted to show that there was resistance inside Russia — that not every Russian is a Putin foot-soldier, literal or figurative.
“Was there resistance in Hitler’s Germany? Yes, there was. Not very strong, but it was there. And it was very important for future generations of Germans as a symbol.”
Yes. The Third Reich was German. But so was the White Rose.
More from Orlov:
For now, Ukrainians don’t give a damn what is happening inside Russia. Russia is the enemy. With Russia you have to fight — just as, probably, Soviet citizens during the Second World War were not preoccupied with internal German processes: “They invaded us and we will fight them.” But for the future, to build some understanding between the peoples, it’s very important that inside Russia there was resistance, and that people did protest against the war, and that not everyone was silent.
What a man, Oleg Orlov (like an earlier Orlov — whom I admired greatly in my youth — Yuri Orlov).
• Mike Eckel, of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, has written about another of the 16 released from Russia, Alsu Kurmasheva. She is in Texas.
After a nearly 10-month ordeal in the whirlwind of the Russian prison system, Alsu Kurmasheva’s rediscovery of life as a free woman looks like this: clean drinking water; a comfortable bed; long walks in the Texas countryside, free from prison-guard supervision. And avocados.
• I met Vladimir Kara-Murza and his wife many years ago. He thought he would die in prison. But he was one of the releasees on August 1. On the 15th, he went to the White House, with Evgenia and their three children, to see President Biden. The resulting photo is one that many of us had been dreaming of, and praying for, for a long time.
Vladimir will be back in Russia, I have no doubt. I hope that it will be a freer Russia, in which the likes of Vladimir, Yashin, and the rest can participate in public life, as is the right of all of us.