Winter is Coming (26 page)

The conference brought activists from all over Russia to share ideas and support. We also invited the international media and speakers from all over the world who were not afraid to speak strongly for democracy in the shadow of the Kremlin. My Civic Congress co-chairs and I wrote countless letters of invitation, calling in favors and twisting arms when necessary. Eventually many prominent figures contributed statements of support, although few G8 administrations had the courage to openly endorse us. We chose the name, The Other Russia Conference, to tell the world that the stable, democratic Russia Putin presented was not reality.

The Russian authorities made efforts to harass us at every turn; perhaps we were irrationally optimistic, but we interpreted this as a sign of progress: “We have them worried!” If this was truly a measure of success, I should have been proud that my humble United Civil Front offices were raided by security forces a few days prior to our December 16 march in Moscow, the first of a series of what would come to be called the Marches of Dissent. Thousands came out in peaceful support under our
we do not agree
banners despite being outnumbered five to one by police.

It led to an even bigger, and more contentious, March of Dissent in St. Petersburg on March 3, 2007. We had been denied permission to hold a rally, but over six thousand people defied the ban in the largest political protest of the Putin era up to that time. That sounds like nothing, I understand, but this was new and risky and it felt like a huge wave of energy. In democratic nations protests are routine, the kind of thing you might do for social reasons even if you don’t feel all that strongly. But coming into the streets in Russia was associated with upheaval and drama. It was a very big step for many of the participants to “radicalize” in this way, walking through OMON (paramilitary riot police) cordons and chanting “Russia Without Putin!”

I felt the energy in the street myself, and I liked it. When I retired from chess I had been told that my fiery, undiplomatic nature would make me unsuitable for political activism. I had been an aggressive attacker at the chessboard and a fractious rebel in the chess world even as world champion, so how would I adapt to the subtle world of alliances and diplomacy? I would like to think that in this I met politics halfway. I listened and showed respect— half the time. I argued with colleagues who knew more and who had done more because I wanted to push us all to a new level of cooperation and confrontation. It was the only way to build a coalition that included former prime ministers and would-be Bolsheviks. And when it came time to march, my loud voice and hard head were assets, not weaknesses.

Dozens of marchers were attacked by the riot police that day, the only violence that took place. It is very important to emphasize that over the course of many marches there was not a single overturned car or broken window. But of course we were demonized in the Kremlin-controlled media as violent hooligans and reporters focused their cameras on the few clashes with police, which of course had been provoked by the police. Around a dozen Marches of Dissent took place around the country in 2007, though the majority were in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In November I was arrested at a Moscow rally and this time I was sentenced to five days in jail under the new anti-demonstration laws. It wasn’t pleasant, although I enjoyed a relatively gilded jail experience, signing autographs for guards and police and generally hearing a lot of sympathetic remarks from them about the state of the country. My old world championship rival, Anatoly Karpov, even tried to visit me. He was turned away, but I very much appreciated the gesture, especially since we were as opposed politically as we were in chess style.

As the rift between Putin’s Russia and the governments of the United States and Europe became increasingly apparent, a new diplomatic position was slowly adopted in the West. After years of trying to accept Putin as an equal, they started to say that while there are differences between Russia and our Western counterparts, these differences are minor, and “within an acceptable range,” in the words of one European Union official.

For me and for a dozen of my colleagues marching for democracy, that “acceptable range” was 120 square feet. That’s the size of the jail cell several of us occupied for five days as punishment for “disobeying the orders of a police officer” at the opposition rally in Moscow. That was the charge a Moscow district court added after the fact, a charge not mentioned in the handwritten testimony of the arresting officers. That was the least conspicuous of the many illegal aspects of my arrest and trial.

After our rally of several thousand people we attempted to meet up with another group, a meeting led by well-known human rights leader Lev Ponomaryov. From there we intended to deliver a petition of protest to the office of the Central Election Committee (CEC). The police had blocked the underground pedestrian passageways so we had to cross the broad street instead and we were soon blocked by more police. When they moved in close I spoke with commanding officer Major General Vyacheslav Kozlov, whom I had met previously. He warned us to turn back, saying we would not be allowed to approach the CEC offices. I offered to send a small delegation of twenty people to present the petition and he again told us to turn back, which we did.

Of course it is inaccurate to say that the police commander was the one in command. FSB officers in plain clothes were clearly in charge even at the police station, and the arrest itself was as choreographed as the trial to come. When the OMON special security forces pushed in past everyone else to arrest me, we could all hear “Make sure you get Kasparov” on their walkie-talkies.

From the moment of our detention we were not allowed to see our lawyers, even when we were charged at the police station. Three hours into the trial the judge said it would be adjourned to the following day. In fact, ten others were held at the police station without counsel for two days prior to their hearings instead of being released, as should occur with an administrative charge. But the judge then left the bench and returned to say that we had misheard her and that my trial would go forward! No doubt another example of what we call “telephone justice” in Russia. That is, before delivering the verdict the judge goes into the back not to deliberate, but to get a phone call from the powers that be.

As in the street and at the police station, the FSB agents and OMON forces were in control. The defense was not allowed to call any witnesses or to present any materials, such as videos and photos taken of the march and the arrests. After this show trial was over I was taken to the police jail at Petrovka 38 in Moscow and there the procedural violations continued. Not with regards to my treatment, which was respectful and as hospitable as a small box with metal furnishings and a hole in the floor for a toilet can be. I wasn’t allowed a phone call and all visitors were refused access. Even my lawyer Olga Mikhailova and Duma member Vladimir Ryzhkov were forbidden to visit me despite having the legal authority to do so.

My other concern was food, since it was out of the question to consume anything provided by the staff. (Nor would I fly Aeroflot unless I had no choice, and when I did I brought my own food and drink. Paranoia long ago became an obsolete concept among those in opposition.) On Sunday, thanks to growing external pressure, they allowed me to receive food packages from my mother.

In a fitting conclusion, even my release was handled illegally. Instead of letting me out at the jail into the waiting crowd of media and supporters, many of whom had themselves been arrested and harassed while picketing, I was taken secretly to the police station where I was first charged. From there I was taken in a colonel’s automobile all the way to my home. This may sound like good service, but it was obvious the authorities wanted to avoid the festive scene that would have occurred outside the jail upon my release.

When I had been arrested the previous April and fined $40, some people poked fun at the trivial amount. And five days in a Moscow jail is hardly the worst fate that can be imagined. Some commenters even suspected I wanted to provoke my own arrest for publicity, a chessplayer’s far-sighted strategy. First off, the penalty was not the point: the principle is. Were we to have the rule of law in Russia or not? Secondly, I had no intention of becoming a martyr or in leading an opposition movement from prison. I had no illusions before, and afterward I could confirm it was not a pleasant place to be even for a brief stay.

And this was not chess, with its cold-blooded calculations. This fight was about honor and morality. I could not ask people to protest in the streets if I was not there with them. At the rally on Saturday I had said our slogan must be “We must overcome our fear” and I was obliged to stand by these words.

It is also essential to point out that these arrests were only the tip of the iceberg, the small fraction that can be seen. Such things were taking place all over Russia on a daily basis. Opposition activists, or just those who happened to be in the way of the administration, were being harassed and arrested regularly on false charges of drug possession, extremism, or the latest trend: for owning illegal software.

During my five days in jail I had the chance to speak with many of the “ordinary consumers” of Kremlin propaganda. They were generally sympathetic and showed no signs of believing the many lies the Kremlin and the youth groups it sponsors have spread about the opposition. For them I was still the Soviet champion and the idea that I was an “American agent” sounded as ludicrous as it was.

So why was Mr. Putin so scared if things were going so well? He is, or at least he still was back then, a rational and pragmatic person, not prone to melodrama. He knew the numbers, so why the brutality and heavy-handed campaigning if he knew he and United Russia were going to win easily?

The answer is that he was becoming aware of how brittle his power structure was. Instead of sounding like the tsar, high above the crowd, he was starting to sound like just another paranoid autocrat, surrounded by enemies. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.”

And so demagoguery it was and demagoguery it continued to be. A violent pro-Putin youth group, Nashi, had already released a poster celebrating Putin’s “crushing victory” in the December 2 parliamentary elections. It also warned against the “enemies of the people of Russia,” me included, attempting to disqualify the results. These terms jibed nicely with Putin’s own rhetoric of threats and fear. The ground was being prepared for greater oppression.

Along with our public protests, The Other Russia also worked to establish a communications structure beyond the long reach of the Kremlin. We wanted to expose the daily crimes that were occurring and get this information into the hands of the right people in the press and the governments of the free world. As time went on, and the crackdown on civil society and public protest got stronger and stronger, I came to believe that this international outreach was the most promising avenue of attack. Putin benefited so much from economic and political engagement with the West that he was practically unassailable at home. Cutting him off from that foreign embrace was a priority. Unfortunately, the leaders of the world’s so-called leading democracies showed little interest in living up to their professed ideals.

Nothing symbolized the lack of will to stand up to Putin than the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg held July 15-17, 2006. The G7 was an informal club more than an organization, a strangely casual group that brought together the leaders of the seven largest industrialized democracies. (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, as first met in 1976. Brazil and India have recently surpassed Canada and Italy on the GDP list, or will soon.) Boris Yeltsin was invited as a sort of honorary participant in 1998, a tradition that was carried over to Vladimir Putin. Russia hosting the meeting in 2008 represented its official entry into the club, which many had already called the G8 for years, instead of the awkward “G7+1.”

This was the cast: Stephen Harper, Canada; Jacques Chirac, France; Angela Merkel, Germany; Romano Prodi, Italy; Junichiro Koizumi, Japan; Tony Blair, United Kingdom; George W. Bush, United States. The president of the European Commission was also usually invited and Jose Manuel Barroso attended the summit at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg.

It was a grand moment for Putin and an equally dismal one for Russian democracy. Putin loved to see and be seen with these paragons of democracy as much as he despised what they supposedly stood for. It had been a nice gesture to invite Yeltsin to attend in the hope that all additional engagement with Russia would be good for everyone. Instead, the G8 became a perfect example of the damage engagement could do. Putin exploited every photo-op and handshake to flaunt these democratic credentials at home. It was difficult enough to communicate the opposition message of democracy to the Russian people without their seeing Putin on every channel being embraced as an equal by the leaders of the free world. I maintained the hope that the West would find its collective backbone and that Russia’s participation would be made contingent on our actually being a democracy. Instead, it took Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to finally get Russia’s G8 membership suspended.