At the end of this month, thousands of Russians will mark another demoralizing event in their country’s often tragic history: the third anniversary of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.
On Feb. 27, 2015, the 55-year-old charismatic opposition leader and his girlfriend were crossing the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in the shadow of Moscow’s Red Square when a van slowed long enough for mysterious assassins to pump at least four bullets into Nemtsov. His death set back Russia’s struggling democratic movement, yet inspired a renewed commitment to resist Russia’s growing authoritarianism.
Nemtsov’s murder also was a personal tragedy for me. Twenty-five years ago, I journeyed half-way around the world from my Anchorage home to the gritty industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod. Its regional governor was a 32-year-old physicist named Boris Nemtsov.
I was there as a volunteer media advisor to Nemtsov’s administration under the auspices of a U.S. democracy-building institute. I was a regular visitor to the Soviet Far East where Alaska and Russia citizen-diplomats were melting the Cold War “Ice Curtain,” including participating in Juneau sister-city exchanges with Vladivostok.
But I had never heard of this city until Nemtsov’s reforms started attracting the world’s attention.
In the industrial heartland 260 miles east of Moscow, it couldn’t have happened in a more surprising place. Stalin renamed the city “Gorky” to honor locally born writer Maxim Gorky, an apologist for the Soviet dictator’s excesses. Dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov spent seven long years there in KGB-enforced exile.
In that environment, Nemtsov came to politics opposing a nuclear power plant. As governor, he pushed reforms rejected as too progressive at the national level by President Mikhail Gorbachev.
During my months there, international journalists and politicians including Margaret Thatcher arrived to witness Nemtsov’s bold innovations. He was witty, brash and as impatient as any politician I’ve seen. I still remember my terror as a passenger in a car he insisted on driving to a TV interview at speeds that would rival a NASCAR driver.
President Boris Yeltsin brought Nemtsov to Moscow in the late 1980s as first deputy prime minister with special responsibility for reforming Russia’s corrupt energy sector. Nemtsov’s popularity soared and Yeltsin reportedly introduced him to President Bill Clinton as his preferred successor.
After Russia’s economic crash in the late 1990s, Nemtsov became Russia’s leading and most high-profile opposition leader. His continued forceful advocacy of democratic and economic reforms were praised by American politicians from President Barack Obama to Sen. John McCain.
I was reacquainted with Nemtsov two decades after I first met him when I was chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Mark Begich. Nemtsov was always accompanied to our office by Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has assumed his mantle of fighting for democratic reforms as chairman of the Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.
Kara-Murza’s bravery rivals that of his mentor; Vladimir has twice nearly died from mysterious poisoning yet continues his courageous work.
Less than a month after Nemtsov’s assassination, I was in Moscow and made my way to the murder site. Stacked knee-deep along the bridge were red and white carnations and roses as candles and pictures of Nemtsov flickered in the cold wind.
Nemtsov and his movement supported the type of citizen diplomacy in which average Alaskans engaged with their Russian counterparts to help end the Cold War in the mid-1980s.
Last year, in seeking a fitting way to honor Nemtsov, a bipartisan group of American senators introduced legislation naming the plaza in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington after him. The finger-in-the-eye measure won unanimous Foreign Relations Committee support, but reportedly has been bottled up by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the request of his Russian counterpart.
Instead, the District of Columbia city council, at Kara-Murza’s urging, has just unanimously adopted its own legislation to designate Boris Nemtsov Plaza at the Russian Embassy.
The honor is welcome but incomplete. Alaskans and all Americans should exhibit the same courage Nemtsov demonstrated to pressure our own government to resist Russia’s autocratic excesses and usher in democratic reforms such as free elections, an independent media and basic human rights for all.
• David Ramseur was a longtime Juneau resident as an aide to governors Steve Cowper and Tony Knowles. He recently published the book, “Melting the Ice Curtain: The Extraordinary Story of Citizen Diplomacy on the Russia-Alaska Frontier.”
