Oh, Russia, you've done it again.
In spite of the best efforts of a few individuals, the Russian Federation hasn't come very far since the days of Stalin. Putin's Russia is a land-grabbing, backwards, politically incorrect, oppressive place with economic woes out the wazoo. One of the few things to be said for it was that people didn't vanish in the middle of the night, and political players who opposed the leader didn't turn up dead. Now, we may not even be able to give the Russians credit for that.
A murder was committed in Russia this past week. Normally, this wouldn't be headline news - murders are committed everywhere in the world all the time, and nobody assumes that they'll cause Stalin to rise from the grave and start a third world war. But three things make this case particularly important: the man who was killed, the manner in which he was killed, and just where he was killed. The victim of the murder was Boris Nemtsov, a leader in the Russian opposition (those individuals opposed to Putin's regime) and a well-known critic of his president. He was one of the heads of Russia's Republican Party (yes, in Russia, Republicans are liberal), and had been arrested previously for speaking against Putin and the Russian government. That's normal, standard stuff over in Russia, as it has been throughout the country's history. He was gunned down in a drive-by shooting, and the perpetrators are unknown. But to many across the globe, particularly the Russian opposition, one factor makes it plain who the culprit is. That factor, of course, is the proximity of Nemtsov's murder to one of the most secure places in all of Russia - the Kremlin itself. Nemtsov was shot down on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, less than a mile from the Kremlin's walls. The Kremlin, of course, is Putin's official residence, and one of the most heavily-guarded areas in Russia. In short, a political opponent of Vladimir Putin's was gunned down by unknown assailants within sight of Red Square. The circumstances are suspicious, to say the least.
This isn't to say that we should automatically point the finger at Putin, of course. There is no official evidence linking the killings to the government at all - this is all conjecture. Nemtsov's death has rallied the Russian opposition, which is hardly in Putin's best interests. Vladimir Putin has struck me as many things over the years, but he's never struck me as a fool. Putin doesn't command the same fear of his people that Stalin did - nobody had the guts to stand up to Stalin, and if they did, they died on the spot. I don't think Putin's about to order the execution of the millions of people involved in the Russian opposition. This could be the spark that destroys his ultra-conservative government, and he probably knows that. Just as the Charlie Hebdo shootings sparked waves of marches and encouraged free speech in western Europe, the assassination of Nemtsov is certain to galvanize the Russian opposition and give their movement much more weight, now and in the future. The license plate on a car suspected to have been involved in the shooting was traced to one of Russia's Caucasian border provinces, not far from Georgia and Chechnya. It's not out of the question that an Islamic extremist may have silenced Nemtsov, who was Jewish. It's also not impossible that the opposition killed Nemtsov to make a martyr out of him and frame Putin's government. It seems unlikely, but far stranger things have happened in the history of Russian politics. Just look at Rasputin's influence on the last Tsarina and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Stalin's death (I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet five dollars that Khrushchev had a hand - more on that next time). Of course, it's entirely possible that all this is evidence that Putin is responsible. Reverse psychology is very real in the political world. The "I stand to gain nothing for this" could be a logical ruse to throw people off Putin's trail. The license plate on the car found could just be another clever ploy. Putin's quite capable of being devious, sly, and downright sinister. The point is, we don't know. At any rate, Putin's launching an investigation with his own people and offering a three-million-ruble award (over $60K) for information leading to the apprehension of culprits. The Russian president joined world leaders in announcing the crime, but unlike many of those leaders, he isn't hinting that he believes Putin was responsible. As with so many things these days, we'll just have to wait and see.
Once again, the rest of the world is being decent enough to remind us that things aren't all that bad stateside. We live in a nation where Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Reince Priebus (the chairs of the Democratic and Republican National Committees, respectively) can go out, get a cup of coffee, and voice their opinions about people with political power without having to worry about being shot dead in the street. And we, as American citizens, have that right as well. Maybe we aren't the best country in the world when it comes to this sort of thing, but we're miles away from being the worst.
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