This is the third part of an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza. Read part one here and part two here.
Kara-Murza was late to our interview because he was at the hospital, receiving treatment for being poisoned, for the second time. He is a journalist and political activist who recently produced a documentary about his friend Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician who was murdered in 2015.
I sat down with Kara-Murza in northwest Washington, D.C., where he lived from 2004 to 2012 while working as a TV news bureau chief, before returning to Russia. To read his blog, go here.
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Ben Parker: How is Donald Trump portrayed in Russian media, particularly state TV? How is the latest scandal involving Donald Trump Jr. being covered?
Vladimir Kara-Murza: Mr. Peskov, who is Putin’s press spokesman, whose main job seems to be denying things all the time, came out and denied that the Kremlin has any connection to Veselnitskaya. I can tell you that given the way this regime operates, and the total command and control vertical structure, it’s absolutely impossible that there would be a contact between someone like Veselnitskaya, who’s spent years lobbying on behalf of the Kremlin against the Magnitsky Act, and the campaign of a leading U.S. presidential candidate without prior approval and knowledge of somebody at the top of the regime.
A lot of people have been focused on whether there’s been collusion on the part of the Trump campaign because of this meeting. I’m not going to comment on that. I think you have enough Russians trying to meddle in U.S. domestic politics. I’m not going to do that.
For me, the most important aspect of the story is why she was there. She was there to lobby against the Magnitsky Act, to try to overturn it, to undermine it, which again goes to show how important it is for the Kremlin to try to kill this law. I think, actually, one of the main things we should take from this story is to see and to continue to watch how the Magnitsky Act continues to be implemented by the U.S. government.
Rex Tillerson, U.S. secretary of state, when he had his confirmation hearings in the Senate, was specifically asked on record by Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland whether this administration would continue to implement the Magnitsky Act. He said yes, publicly and on record. So far, they’ve not put any new names on the Magnitsky designations. I guess it’s only been six months of the administration. Let’s see what happens in the next few months.
BP: Among the right in this country, among conservatives, there’s an ongoing conversation about patriotism and nationalism. Russia has a little more experience with those words than we do, I think. To you, is there a difference between patriotism and nationalism, [if so] what is the difference, and is one better than the other?
VKM: Yes, of course there is. Patriotism is a very noble feeling. In fact, I’d say it would be really strange if someone was not a patriot of his or her country.
Boris Nemtsov was a true patriot of Russia. He gave his life for it. He had so many opportunities to choose a comfortable and safe existence, in Russia or abroad if he just stayed quiet, but he couldn’t stay quiet because he cared about his country, he cared about its future, he couldn’t just stand idly by and watch what this regime was doing to his country. He chose to do something about it. To me, that’s the highest form of patriotism, and he gave his life for it in the end.
I think of myself as a patriot of Russia absolutely. I want my country to be successful and prosperous, and also democratic and based on the rule of law.
For me, patriotism is love of your country; nationalism is hatred of others. At least some forms of nationalism are, and I think those forms of nationalism are very destructive. There’s nothing noble about this, especially the ethnic kind of nationalism, when you believe in racial superiority.
For example, in Russia, many nationalists are anti-Semitic. In fact, until last year, I was deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party of Russia, which was the party founded and led by Boris Nemtsov, and I had to resign at the end of last year and leave the party altogether. So did many of my colleagues, because when there was a so called parliamentary election last year, the party leadership invited a nationalist anti-Semite, Vyacheslav Maltsev, to join the electoral list of our party, a pro-democracy party which was once led by Boris Nemtsov. We could not accept that. For me, that goes against every principle that we hold dear.
Those types of nationalists—ethnic, intolerant, anti-Semitic nationalists—are very destructive. These views are abhorrent, not just in Russia but anywhere in the world. In fact, I think it’s anti-patriotic.
I think nationalism is destructive to real patriotism, especially for a country like Russia. We’re a country of dozens of different ethnic groups and where all major world religions are represented. If in such a country you try to engage in ethnic nationalism and say one group is better than the other, that’s going to end in a catastrophe. We know of some countries in Europe that tried this. Look at where it led. I reject that completely.
BP: Donald Trump went to Warsaw, and in his speech he mentioned Western civilization and Western values. This generated very different responses in the United States. Many people on the right praised him. A lot of people on the left said that it was a form of nationalism. Do you think Western civilization is something worth defending rhetorically, and is Russia part of it? Should it be?
VKM: The latter part of your question—absolutely. Of course Russia is a part of Western civilization. Russia is part of what we usually call European Judeo-Christian civilization. I’m just stating the obvious here. There’s no question about it. We are a European country. We have a European history. We have many European values, just politically speaking. I’m not even talking about the culture—there wouldn’t be a European culture without a Russian component to it, without our literature, our music, our art—but I’m talking politically.
It was the czar of Russia who signed the first law in Europe granting electoral suffrage to women—that was for the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906. Russia adopted universal suffrage two years before Germany. It was a Russian parliament that was among the first parliaments in Europe to call for the abolition of the death penalty. There’s absolutely no question in my mind that Russia is an integral part of European and Western culture.
That’s actually a fundamental philosophical difference between the current regime and us, the democratic opposition. Boris Nemtsov, in one of his last interviews in 2014, was asked, “What are the main differences between the Kremlin and the Russian opposition?” he answered, “We believe that Russia is a European country. We believe that our civilizational choice,” he actually used this word, “is European.” I subscribe to this 100 percent. Of course Russia is part of Western/European civilization.
I’m not going to answer whether it should be or not. It is, however much people in the Kremlin and the Putin regime want to pretend otherwise. The people who are in the Kremlin today do not think Russia is part of Europe or part of Western civilization. They’ve actually said it openly. A few years ago, there was an official white paper published by the Russian government, the culture ministry, which was entitled “Russia is Not Europe.” This defies not just basic geography but also centuries of history, both political and cultural. Mr. Medvedev, who is the current prime minister and was Putin’s placeholder as president for four years, he’s publicly on the record as saying that European parliamentary democracy would be a disaster for Russia. It’s just mind boggling. They insult their own people.
I think it’s very important to defend the values of our common European civilization. That is in no way implying that other civilizations are inferior or worse, or that we are superior or better. No, every civilization is unique. Every civilization has things to cherish and defend. I think that our Western/European civilization has a lot of great things that we should cherish and defend, like rule of law, like parliamentary democracy, like the principle of constitutional government.
Though I think by now, in the 21st century, they really should be universal. It should be a common principle for everybody that people are entitled to their basic rights and freedoms. The only source of political legitimacy for a government in the 21st century should be a democratic, free, and fair election—not just in the West but across the world. This is not necessarily a “Western” value, it’s a universal value.
BP: Anything else to add?
VKM: The only thing I would add is that another mistake that a lot of people make in the West, including political leaders. They confuse or equate Russia with the Putin regime. Even now, as we hear all these stories here in the U.S. about the Kremlin’s involvement or interference in the U.S. presidential elections, and generally about the Kremlin’s behavior, we keep hearing “Russia this, Russia that, the Russians did this…”
I’m Russian. Boris Nemtsov was Russian. Alexei Navalny is Russian. We’re no less Russian than Vladimir Putin. Please don’t equate our country and the kleptocratic, unelected regime in the Kremlin. It’s not about Russia or the Russians, it’s about the behavior of the Putin regime. Sanctions should also be directed not at Russia but at the Putin regime. People in the West, leaders in the West, should really be careful about making this false equivalence between Russia as a nation and this regime that has been abusing and violating both Russian and international law for years and years.
Please don’t help Putin’s propaganda by sending messages that can be construed against Russia as a country and the people of Russia, because in that case, all Putin needs to do is quote Western leaders on his propaganda channels, and say “Look, they want to harm Russia. They’re against the Russian people and Russia as a country, not against the government.” Please don’t give them the ammunition they use against you.
Russia is so much bigger, so much wider, so much more diverse, and frankly so much better than this government and this regime. Those tens of thousands of young faces that we’ve seen coming out into the streets in the last few weeks are a good reminder of that.
