The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

There was a funeral. Pavel Sheremet, the journalist who had made the film for Nemtsov's fiftieth birthday, emceed the memorial service. They miscalculated and had to cut it short—not everyone who had come to pay respects had been able to enter the building by the time the funeral procession left for the cemetery.

Zhanna and Raisa did go to Italy, but the BBC found her there again, and this time Zhanna said even more. Russian police had arrested a Chechen man, a police officer, for Boris's murder. But she said that she had no trust in any Russian investigation.

You keep asking me if my father posed a threat to the regime. Of course he did. You have such a two-dimensional view of the world. Look wider. Study the totalitarian regimes of the world. The dissidents are either in exile—look at how many people have left Russia, like Kasparov—or else they are in prison or under house

arrest, or they are killed Anyone who thinks differently poses a

threat to a totalitarian regime. . . .

Are you afraid to return to Russia?

Not really, I'm not. I'm going back.

Did your father's murder change your views of—

You know, I was always a pessimist, but this turned my whole world upside down. Not that I had any illusions. But I certainly didn't think that it's possible at all—I still can't believe that they killed my father. I don't consider myself an activist. But I am an honorable person and I love my father very much, and I want everyone to know the truth. And the truth is what I'm saying—that we'll never get the truth from the authorities in Russia. But I just want to say that what I'm saying now means that the authorities will now view

me as an activist. That's all I have to say.²⁵

Zhanna did return to Moscow. She figured it was a matter of time before she lost her job—the people at RBK were surely just waiting for an excuse to cut her loose.

Boris's friends—the activists who had been by his side for the last ten years, in Solidarity, at marches, and in jail—set up a memorial on the bridge. After the first time the authorities removed the flowers and Russian flags, they set up a round-the-clock vigil. Vladimir Kara- Murza was one of the half-dozen people who went there every day, to stand in memory and on guard.

In late May, the University of Bonn invited Zhanna to give a talk in memory of her father. She woke up in a slightly worn German Modernist hotel on the three-month anniversary of Boris's death. She read the news. Vladimir Kara-Murza had been hospitalized with multiple organ failure as the result of an unknown toxin. So this was how it worked. The famous got a bullet in the heart and the less famous got poison in their tea.

The hotel, it turned out, had a monthly rate. She could stay there while she looked for an apartment. The family who ran the hotel restaurant spoke Italian—she could communicate with them, even if she knew no one else in this town. It did not occur to Zhanna to go anywhere else. Bonn was quiet and clean and safe, as good a place as any. She was never going back to Russia.

twenty-two

FOREVER WAR

after the protest following Navalny's sentencing in July 2013—after several of the best hours he could remember, when he and the people all around him were doing what had to be done, asking no one's permission to do it—after the police finally dispersed the crowd, Seryozha found himself standing in the square across the street from the Bolshoi Theatre. Everyone was gone. Some people had been loaded onto police buses. Most had gone home. A few had settled in at nearby bars. The night was warm, and the terrace bars on the pedestrian mall around the corner were serving Cuba Libres. Seryozha still felt the spot where a policeman's baton had poked at his back as he and his little group were pushed along the sidewalk, away from the protest site. He still felt hoarse from shouting out to other protesters when he wanted them to break away from the cops, then double back and take their stand again. Too few of them had heard him. He went home.

The next day, after Navalny had been released from prison, Seryozha read on Facebook that a woman had gone back to the square to continue the protest. He knew her—not well, but he knew her name and he had often gone to a cafe she managed. She kept writing the same thing on her page, calling on people to come and stand with her, to refuse to leave until all charges against Navalny were dropped and until the Bolotnoye prisoners were released. She wrote comments on her friends' pages—she had a lot of friends—demanding that they come and join her. Sometimes they did, for an hour or two, and then they went back to their lives. She stayed. Every day for three