Boris Nemtsov would have been overjoyed to see the estimated 20,000 who turned out on Sunday in Moscow.
The opposition rallies he’d been urging people to attend have, since 2012, been pathetic affairs. That only adds tragedy to profound sadness because those who marched this weekend were there in shock and grief at the murder of the firebrand Putin opponent, once touted as Presidential material.
Boris Nemtsov was a breath of fresh air when he burst on to the Russian political scene in the early 1990’s. Appointed by Boris Yelstin to the post of Governor of Nizhny Novgorod, he was all that Russians had turned their lives upside down for when they punted that people power, coupled with new freedoms granted by Mikhail Gorbachev would end seven decades of communism.
He was a genuine democrat; someone who didn’t just utter the word in meaningless platitudes, but understood what it meant and how hard it would be to achieve. Young, urbane, good-looking, acutely intelligent, brash and fearless, Boris Nemtsov in his tight black jeans and open necked shirts, would walk in to a room and heads would turn. He was what Russians hadn’t seen before, an authentic politician who understood the hardship of his compatriots lives and had lived it. No one was surprised when then President Yelstin brought him to Moscow to become one of two deputy Prime Ministers.
Nemtsov walked the corridors of the Kremlin like the ‘man most likely.’ And for more than a year there’d have been few Russians who didn’t think that when the bumbling, vodka soaked Yelstin, his reign mired in allegations of corruption, finally shuffled away from the top job, it would be Boris Nemtsov who would succeed him and clean up the Kremlin. But Vladimir Putin put an end to that.
For a short while, Nemtsov championed his nemesis. But the winding back of democratic reforms, the entrenchment of a small clique of Kremlin masters whose grip on Russia’s capital seemed unseemly, forced Nemtsov to rethink. From the sidelines, he railed against ‘Putinism’, which he insisted had replaced the nascent democracy so many had hoped would triumph. Time however took its toll on Nemtsov’s political potency and he was eclipsed by a younger, social media aware brand of political opposition.
He could have white anted Alexei Navalny, the putative leader of the new order and the young politico’s who surrounded him. Instead, Nemtsov embraced them, lending his “corporate knowledge” in the vain hope of boosting the dwindling number of people who wanted change. Always frustrated that Russians had seemed bought off - beguiled by the designer shops, Bentleys and BMW’s; the supermarkets groaning with foie gras and French champagne, the rivers of gold which fuelled an excessive lifestyle - Nemtsov reminded his compatriots of what they had surrendered.
Few listened. In the end the social compact the Russian leader had made with his people – that he would rule as he saw fit and they would prosper and live well – was so much easier to bear than a return to the mayhem of the late 80’s and early 90’s when their parents risked everything for political change and almost starved in the process. The war in Ukraine might have forced a renegotiation of this social compact, if not for the nationalist propaganda that has drowned all other voices.
President Putin, by all accounts was genuinely shocked when he heard a gunman had pummelled 4 bullets into Nemtsov on the Kremlin’s doorstep. Yes, he was the man who’d just been imploring people to take to the streets to call for a “Russia without Putin”. But he was no threat. And no one, including the masters of the Kremlin thought otherwise.
Like other murders with a political hue before this, a gunman will be apprehended. But if someone other than a shady, disaffected group was behind the shooter, the truth will be buried with Nemtsov.
What won’t be buried with him is another truth that may slowly begin to hold more sway than nationalism.
Over many years, as Russian media has fallen to state control, as the countries parliament has become a rubber stamp for the singular wishes of a popular president, Russians have been mired in a manufactured culture of fear and hate. Fear that the west, led by the USA, is trying to subjugate them and force regime change - a concern not entirely unfounded. Hate of anyone who doesn’t bow at the alter of nationalism. Empowered by propaganda in the shadow of a deadly war to hold on to Ukraine, picking off those who want a different Russia is collateral damage.
Where Russia goes from here is anyone’s guess. But the countries ineffectual, divided opposition will be hoping Boris Nemtsov will achieve in death, what he couldn’t in life – giving people licence to at least talk about the repercussions of this new culture.
Monica Attard is a Sydney based freelance journalist and former ABC foreign correspondent and senior broadcaster.
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