For the past three years, Russian opposition activists say, authorities have attempted to erase any trace of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in the spot where he was murdered—on a bridge just outside the Kremlin. But on Tuesday morning, Russian officials will wake up to an inescapable reality: The street in front of their embassy in Washington will be officially designated Boris Nemtsov Plaza.
Russian dissidents and U.S. lawmakers who have led the charge to symbolically rename the stretch of Wisconsin Avenue say that doing so will honor Nemtsov’s memory and send a message of support to those who continue to fight for democracy. The unveiling will occur on the three-year anniversary of Nemtsov’s assassination.
“This will serve as a daily reminder to Vladimir Putin and his cronies that they cannot use murder, violence, and intimidation to silence dissent,” Florida senator Marco Rubio, who last year introduced legislation to rename the street, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “The American people stand with those Russians bravely fighting for a free and democratic future for their country.”
Nemtsov, who had served as deputy prime minister under Russian president Boris Yeltsin, quickly became a leading critic of Putin’s as he rose to power. At the time of his death, Nemtsov had been preparing a report on Russia’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine. His supporters say that authorities in Moscow have worked to undermine efforts to memorialize him since his murder.
“Several times a week, municipal workers, with help from the police, plunder the makeshift memorial on the bridge where he was killed,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, wrote in March. “The authorities have repeatedly rejected petitions for a plaque to the slain politician in Moscow.”
Over the weekend, demonstrators gathered in Russian cities to march in his memory, chanting “Russia will be free” and touting signs with slogans such as “Putin — where’s the mastermind?” A Moscow court in 2017 convicted five men for Nemtsov’s murder, but his allies have persistently criticized the Kremlin for not pursuing those who masterminded the crime.
“People in Russia and around the world are convinced that the murder had a political subtext, but our investigators and the court deny the obvious,” Nemtsov’s daughter Zhanna said as the trial came to a close in late June. “On top of that, they were not able to determine any sort of motive for the murder. This shows the blatant mendacity of our government.”
Though at least 16 cameras covered the crime scene, very little video has made it into the public eye, as David Satter wrote in National Review. But Satter says the tape that has emerged suggests a “carefully planned military operation.”
Moscow authorities on February 22 gave the OK for a plaque to be placed on Nemtsov’s apartment building. “I don’t know what motives [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin had,” Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin told Radio Svoboda during Sunday’s demonstrations. “But this decision is the result of a long, three-year pressure by a variety of people—public figures, politicians, and the volunteers that stood on this bridge.”
Asked what gave him the optimism to continue fighting for the same ideals that he had fought for with Nemtsov, Yashin said: “What gives me strength is that people have not become afraid.”
“Why did they kill Nemtsov? To scare people, to shut our mouths,” he continued. “But we see that already for three years, people are going out and expressing solidarity with Nemtsov’s ideas.”
“The people who thought up, who organized this murder—they of course did not count on such a result, on such an effect.”
News of the renaming drew the ire of some Russian officials. Russian media reported that one lawmaker proposed changing the postal address of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to “1 North American Dead End.” Opposition leaders criticized the proposed move.“The perpetuation of the memory of a Russian politician in Washington is seen in Moscow as an eternal rebuke,” said former Parliament member Dmitry Gudkov. “Our government is embarrassed, and they take revenge.”
Tuesday’s renaming has precedent. In 1984, lawmakers changed the address of the then-Soviet Embassy to 1 Andrei Sakharov Plaza, after the famous dissident. But a similar effort in 2014 to rename the street on which the Chinese Embassy sits after prominent human rights activist Liu Xiaobo failed in the face of an expected veto from President Obama.
