The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

boris was on borrowed time now, so he worked twice as furiously. He published a report on corruption and fraud in the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics. The report focused on, among others, Vladimir Yakunin, head of the Russian railroads monopoly and a key funder of Russian Orthodox "traditional values" activism. His wife ran an organization called Sanctity of Motherhood and was a fixture of World Congress of Families gatherings. Born in 1948, Yakunin had been a KGB officer in Soviet times. He had been a member of the Putin clan since the 1990s.¹³ Nemtsov's focus, however, was not on Yakunin's life but on the business he had done in Sochi, including a contract to build a forty-eight-kilometer* stretch of highway at a cost of more than $50 billion. Nemtsov was certain this was a world record. He called this chapter "The Most Expensive Project of the Most Expensive Olympics in History."¹⁴

That spring Yakunin started dragging Nemtsov into court: he sued him for libel, demanding 3 million rubles—the equivalent of nearly $100,000 when the suit was first filed but worth only about half that amount by the time the case was finally on the docket late the following winter.¹⁵

Nemtsov also began assembling a report on Putin's war in Ukraine. It would include proof of the use of Russian troops in both Crimea and eastern Ukraine. It would include body counts, which the Kremlin had classified. It would include proof that the missile that shot down a Malaysian Airlines plane in July 2014, killing 298 people, was fired from a Russian-made launcher located on territory controlled by Russians and the Ukrainian separatists they backed. It would include information about peace negotiations held in Minsk in the fall of 2014—like the fact that Russia appended its signature (it was represented by Moscow's ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov) to the accords reached there, thereby acknowledging that it was a party to the conflict.—

Nemtsov led a second peace march in Moscow on September 21, 2014—about twenty-five thousand people came.¹⁷ That day one of the buildings along the route featured a two-story-tall square banner bearing the words "March of the Traitors." Beneath images of the U.S. flag and the White House, the banner showed the faces of six people —two writers, a rock musician, and three activists, including Nemtsov.¹⁸

At least half of these people were spending all or most of their time outside Russia. Nemtsov's face had appeared on a similarly large poster that had been hung on a building in the center of the city back in April, when he was in Israel. That one was captioned "The Fifth Column. Aliens Among Us." The group was almost entirely different, but Nemtsov's face was a constant.¹⁹ He appeared again in January 2015, on the largest banner yet—this one covered three and a half stories of a high-rise apartment building. "The fifth column insisted on sanctions against their own country. By supporting sanctions, they are causing incomes to fall and prices and unemployment to grow." A quote from Nemtsov's blog appeared next to his face: "The sanctions that have been imposed may destabilize the country. Putin will be facing a crisis and chaos in Russia."²⁰

On New Year's Eve 2015, Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty of defrauding a company whose representative testified that it had not in fact been defrauded. Alexei was sentenced to three and a half years of house arrest—the authorities were apparently trying to avoid another mass protest—but Oleg got three and a half years in prison. He was a hostage now.²¹

With Navalny sentenced, Udaltsov in prison, and Kasparov and Ponomarev in exile, Nemtsov was now the only one of the prominent protest organizers left walking around Moscow (and Yaroslavl). After the winter holidays, he began organizing a third march, timed for the anniversary of the invasion. This time he could not get a permit to march in the center of the city. Nor could he get much support, even among fellow activists, for the march itself. His allies argued that Russians were now concerned more with their own economic problems than with the war. Nemtsov compromised on both counts: the march would be held on the outskirts of the city—an hour's Metro ride from the center—and it would be called "The Spring March Against the Crisis."