Vladimir Kara-Murza

Damir Marusic: Hi, I’m Damir Marusic, an assignment editor here at The Washington Post and 1 of the editors of the Impromptu podcast. Normally on Impromptu, we bring you the conversations we’re having inside The Washington Post opinion section. This time, we’re bringing you a big 1 we haven’t been able to stop talking about, The release of our dear colleague and friend Vladimir Karamorza from Russian prison earlier this month. Karamorza was imprisoned by Vladimir Putin’s regime, sentenced for 25 years. He was convicted of treason for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. He won a Pulitzer for the brave columns he wrote for The Post while behind bars these last 2 years. Earlier this month, he was part of the largest international prisoner exchange since the Cold War. This week, he joined Opinions editor David Shipley for an important and timely conversation about press freedom. Today, you will hear that conversation, recorded Wednesday at the Washington Post Live Center. Freedom of speech is 1 of the core values that any decent society must uphold. Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for speaking out against blatant criminality and injustice in his country. Every day, journalists like Vladimir risk their lives to tell the stories that affect change. The Washington Post is proud to be part of the Press Freedom Partnership that stands with and advocates for these brave individuals and their critical work. We’re so glad to have Vladimir back. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Damir: Hello and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Chippley, opinions editor here at The Post, and I’m joined by someone we haven’t seen in a very, very long time, but who we are very happy to see today, Vladimir Karamurtza. Vladimir, a very warm welcome to Washington Post Live. 

Vladimir Kara-Murza: Hello, David. Thank you so much for having me and it’s wonderful to be back on the Washington Post platform and I really mean this in many ways.

Damir: Well, but before we get into into other things, maybe tell us a little bit about the last 2 weeks. What have you noticed?

Vladimir: Well, frankly, the last 2 weeks have been completely surreal. You know, it’s as if I’m watching some sort of a film from a side. It’s a very good film, but it doesn’t feel like this is happening in real life. Just a few weeks ago, I was absolutely certain that I would die in Putin’s Gulag. And now I’m sitting at home and speaking with you, and I’m here with my family, and I could hug my kids, hug my wife, whom I wasn’t allowed even to call on the phone from prison. And so this is Vladimir Gokovsky, who’s a prominent Soviet era dissident and longtime president of conscience, who was himself exchanged in 1976 in actually what was the first of its kind, a East-West exchange involving political prisoners. There’d been exchanges involving spies on both sides before, but this was the first exchange of political prisoners in December, 1976. It was an exchange mediated by the US administration at the time, the Ford administration, it involved Bukowski on the Soviet side and Luis Corvalán, the Chilean Communist Party leader who was imprisoned in Chile and the general finisher on the other side. And in his book recalling this historic exchange, Bukowski compared the experience to what a deep sea diver feels when he suddenly burst out from the depths of the ocean onto the surface and you just completely lose your orientation. You just have absolutely no idea of what was happening. And you need time to sort of acclimate, to get back, to transition back into reality. This is the metaphor he used, and I think it’s a very appropriate 1, spot on. I mean, this is exactly how I’ve been feeling, and I don’t know how much time it will take to get to acclimate, to get back into some sort of normal and to realize that this is actually happening in reality instead of being some sort of a dream. But All I can say is that there are no words adequate enough to express how grateful I feel. And I think I can speak for all of us who are not playing Band for Ankara from Moscow earlier this month, how grateful I feel to all friends in the free world who, throughout all this time, throughout all this hell, never stopped advocating, never stopped speaking out, never forgot for a second about those political prisoners who are sitting in Putin’s gulag, having committed no crime except, you know, speaking out against Putin’s dictatorship, except speaking out against Putin’s aggressive and criminal war against Ukraine. And had it not been for this tireless campaigning by people of goodwill in so many countries, including here in the United States, including my friends at the Washington Post, to whom I am eternally grateful. This would not be happening. I would not be speaking to you now. And I also think it is very important to say and to remember that while the 16 of us on that plane 2 weeks ago, less than 2 weeks ago, was snatched out of the Putin’s GULAG, there are so many others who are still there. There are thousands of people. There are Russian political prisoners. There are Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages. There are hundreds and hundreds, more than a thousand political prisoners in neighboring Belarus, right? There are 2 dictatorships still left in Europe, Russia under Putin and Belarus under Lukashenko. And we must not forget about them for a moment. And we must not relent until they are free and out of this hell as well. And this is 1 of the issues that I’m going to be dedicated a lot of time, dedicating a lot of time and effort to now that I’m out of it myself and back to life, back to reality.

Damir: I hope we can talk more about that later in the conversation. There is a, the moment that you came up for air was captured on a clip that I’m sure you’ve encountered. And we wanted to show that to the audience just quickly. Speaker 3: Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Dad? Yes, Kachusha, is that you? Yes, yes, dad. Hello. Hello, little 1. Hello, I can hear you. Where are you? We’re in the OVO Office.

Vladimir: No word is Speaker 3: strong enough for this. I was sure I’m going to die in prison. I don’t believe what’s happening. I still think I’m sleeping in my prison cell, instead of hearing your voice. But I just wanted to know that you’ve done a wonderful thing by saving so many people. I think there were 16 of us on a plane. Again, I still can’t believe it’s happening.

Damir: I mean, amazing pivot to English in those circumstances. How is the family?

Vladimir: I used the water For the previous 2 and a half years, so I’m surprised I could use it.

Damir: It was stunning. How is your family? How are they faring?

Vladimir: They are fine. They’ve held out for 2 and a half years with hell, you know, amazingly strongly. And it has always been the case, and it is the case now, that it’s actually much harder on the families of political prisoners than it is on political prisoners themselves. Because after all, we did this all purposefully. I mean, I’ve been in Russian politics for almost 25 years, all this time in opposition to Vladimir Putin’s regime, to Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. I mean, I knew what I was getting into. This is my life. This is my mission. And a lot of us, you know, people like my colleague Ilya Yashin, for example, can say the same thing. But our families are suffering only because they are our families, because they are our wives, because they are our children. And this is a very old, very, well, unfortunate, there’s not a strong enough word for this, but it’s a very old tradition going back to Soviet times when the regime in the Kremlin would fight not only their political opponents, but also their families. In sort of the worst, the most horrendous times under Stalin, the wives and children of so-called enemies of the people were actually arrested and sent into the Gulag or internal exile themselves. In sort of less gruesome times, and on the Khrushchev and Brezhnev, they were just pressured, certainly not allowed to speak or communicate with their loved ones. And this is what we’re seeing again today. And so it is much, much harder on our families and on our loved ones than it was on us. And so I’m so deeply grateful to my family, especially to my wife, Evgenia, who as well as caring about our 3 children, caring about our home, basically, you know, carrying on, carrying on and trying to make life as normal as possible for our kids. She also took on all of my work, all of my campaigning, all of my, you know, civil advocacy and political missions. And she’s done amazingly. She’s done it frankly much better than I ever did. And so there are no words adequate enough to express how grateful I feel to to my family for enduring these 2 and a half years of hell. And we will all need adjusting. It’s not just for me, It is for them as well. And so it’s only been what? It’s been less than 2 weeks and I think we will need much more time to sort of get used to each other again, get back to normal, get back to reality, get back into life. But as I said, It feels like a dream, it feels like a film, but it’s an amazing 1 and it is a miracle. I don’t think there’s any other way of putting it.

Damir: As you might imagine, we’ve been flooded by questions from the audience and people who have followed your writing in the Post. We have 1 from Jacqueline Ritz of New Mexico who asks, what major or constant thought focus kept your spirit elevated throughout your ideal? I imagine your family and some of the issues that you’ve just spoken about have, but maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Vladimir: Thank you so much. Thank you to our viewer for this question. So it’s very important 1. I will name 3 things that sort of kept me going in those conditions in which it’s very difficult for any human being to sort of keep going. And I’m certainly not Superman. I’m just a regular human being as anybody else. And in order to sort of maintain yourself, maintain your personality, and frankly speaking, maintain your sanity, it is important to have that focus that she’s asking about. And I would name 3 things, 3 things that kept me going throughout all this and that helped me survive. The first is my Christian faith, because I know that whatever numbers and whatever words are written by some people on pieces of paper, you know, it’s not going to, life is not going to go according to those pieces of paper. It’s going to go according to a higher power, much higher power. And this is an important knowledge, this is an important focus that keeps things in perspective, as it were. And you know what happened to us on the 1st of August, I think certainly confirms that in a very clear way. The second thing I would name is my background as a historian. I’m a historian by education, and my sort of major area of study has been the modern history of Russia, the 19th and 20th century, including the Soviet period. And all of these things, everything that we are living through in Russia today, the repressive dictatorship that engages in a crackdown on the rights and freedoms of our own people, but also that engages in aggression towards neighbors and towards others, a sort of very dark, a very, very dark period in Russian history that we’re living through now under Putin, we’ve had all this before. We’ve seen all this before, both under the Tsars and under the Soviets. And we know how these things end. Because, you know, history frankly is a science as much as chemistry or physics is just our science doesn’t work on numbers and figures, but it certainly has its own laws, it certainly has its own logic, and nobody, but not Vladimir Putin or anybody else can ever override or cancel or try to bypass the logic of history. And so we know how this will end. We know how this will end. It’s only a question of time. So that’s the thing number 2 that I would name. And then the third thing I would say, many, many years ago, almost 20 years ago, I made a documentary about the Soviet dissident movement. I studied it for a long time. These are the people I admire. These are my heroes. To me, these are the real heroes of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union, the people who stood up for the dignity and the reputation of our country at the worst time, at a horrible time, at a time of repression and aggression, again, a similar time to what we’re living today. This documentary is called They Chose Freedom. It was a four-part documentary. And 1 of the people I interviewed for that documentary was Vladimir Bukovsky, whom I already mentioned, the dissident and longtime prisoner of conscience who was exchanged in 1976. And I asked him sort of a very similar question. I asked, what kept you going in the Gulag, in the prisons, in the labor camps? What kept you going? What helped you survive? And he answered with a very short phrase. He said, I knew that I was right. I knew that I was right. And you know, at the time, To be honest, I thought these are just nice sounding words. And of course, I took them into the film because it sounds good. But I have to say now that, you know, having gone through a similar experience myself, I can tell you that this knowledge is really important because I knew that I was right. I knew that the real criminals are those who are waging this aggressive and criminal war against Ukraine, not those of us who have publicly spoken out against it. And when you know that you’re right, The fear and the doubt, frankly, just disappear.

Damir: Can you describe a day in prison? How did the guards treat you? Did you talk with them? Did you have an opportunity to speak with other prisoners? What was your day?

Vladimir: It’s very easy for me to describe, as you put it, a day in prison because they were all the same. Basically just a long groundhog day, you know, endless, meaningless, and exactly the same each 1. Omsk, where I was imprisoned, is a city in Western Siberia that has literally centuries-long traditions of holding political prisoners in Russia, both in the Imperial times and the Soviet times. I mean, among the people who were there were Dostoevsky, for example, the Dezembrists back in the 19th century. In the 20th century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in Omsk on his way to the gulag in Kazakhstan. Mustafa Jamilov, the leader of the Crimean Tatars was there as well. So it’s sort of a place that holds this long, unfortunate tradition. And today in Russia of Vladimir Putin, Omsk is known for the harshest prison regime out of the whole country, frankly. And when I was thrown away from my Moscow prison to Siberia in this prison train, this Stolypin prison train cars, as we call them. And when the convoy officer read out the names of the prisoners from his folder and the final destination, when he called my name and said, Omsk. Everybody who was around me suddenly went quiet. And I didn’t at the time, I didn’t realize what the reason was, but I very well understand it now. It is the harshest prison regime in the whole of Russia. Everything is by the second, by the minute, by the rule, you know, no step left, no step right. The whole day is, you know, literally scheduled by the minute, 05:00 in the morning, 5 a.m. Is the official wake-up call. You attach your bunk to the wall where it stays until 9pm when it slides out, so you cannot lie down or sit properly during the day, just basically walk in the small cell as much as you can, or you sit at this very small and uncomfortable stool that basically, you know, just sticks out of the wall and a tiny desk. It was a small cell. And I have to say as well that in the more than 2 years that I’ve been in prison, I’ve been in 13 different penitentiary institutions, the last 1 being the notorious KGB slash FSB prison in Moscow, the Forte, from where we were taken to the exchange. So quite an appropriate number as well, the Forte being number 13. But what I describe now are the prisons that I was held in in Omsk, because there were several too, but basically the regime and the schedules were all the same. So 05:00 in the morning, in the morning, it’s a wake-up call, the bunk gets attached to the wall, and then you just spend the entire day sitting in a cell. It’s a small cell, 2 by 3 meters, so 7 by 10 feet, something like that.

Damir: Oh, you were given an hour to write, weren’t you? Did you get 1 hour to put your thoughts on? How would you organize your thoughts around that? I mean, that must have been…

Vladimir: To somebody whose profession is writing, as it is in my case, I have to say that’s a particularly sadistic rule. So essentially what you do the whole day is just you just sit and stare at a wall. Because so it’s a small cell 2 by 3 meters 1 small window. Near the ceiling with metal bars. 2 metal doors. You know into the cell itself. That only get open when you let out to the so-called walk, which is depending if you’re in punishment cell, it’s 1 hour a day. If you’re in a regular isolation cell, it’s around a half hours a day. And the walk, frankly, is just walking around in a circle in a small internal covered prison courtyard, which is not much we can understand ourselves, but you can see a little bit of the sky upstairs through the metal bars on top. The rest of the day, you just sit in your cell, essentially doing nothing, not able to speak to anyone, not able to go anywhere, not able to do anything. You’re only given a pen and paper to write for 90 minutes a day, 1 and a half hours, in which you have to cram absolutely everything you have to do. So this includes, for example, preparing for court sessions, which I had quite a few, reading letters from, you know, friends and family responding to those letters, asking any questions, you know, from journalists that are not making notes, doing any writing you have to do, you have to cram it into those 90 minutes a day, then the guards take the pen and paper away as well. And apart from the confined space in which you stay all the time, apart from the total solitude, because I wasn’t in solitude confinement, and it was actually, it’s really amusing to me, well, amusing is probably not the appropriate word, but you have to keep your eye on the prison otherwise, you know, Otherwise it’s very difficult to survive. I think Barlam Shalamov, 1 of the most prominent writers and the people who chronicled the Soviet Gulag, he wrote that for a prisoner to remain a human being, he or she must kept the irony. And so you have to sort of keep this ironic attitude to everything. And it was really amusing to me when my lawyer said to me that according to international law, according to the United Nations standard minimum rules on the treatment of prisoners, solitary confinement for more than 15 days in a row is officially considered to be a form of torture, degrading and inhumane treatment. I was on solitary for almost 11 months straight without any break. And I have to say it really, it’s really not easy when you’re just completely deprived of any human contact. Because as Aristotle said, human beings are social animals, right? We need communication as much as we need oxygen to breathe or water to drink or food to eat. And when you’re just totally deprived of it, it is very, very difficult. And so 1 of the advice that people who’ve been through this experience always give, and I’ve read a lot of books, a lot of memoirs by Soviet dissidents of the past in my life. And so I was fortunate to sort of having known about this advice as well. The advice they always give is you have to fill your time with something meaningful, something constructive, something useful. So you just don’t just sit there and stare at a wall because to speak frankly, it’s really easy to start going crazy pretty soon if that happens. And so I try to read as much as I can, although it’s not very easy because your concentration really goes down only in those conditions. But I try to read as much as I can. I read up actually a lot of literature and the history of the Russian Civil War, because as you know, Omsk was actually the capital of White Russia, of the anti-Bolshevik Russia during the Civil War in 1918, 1919. This was where the Kolchak government was based. And so there was actually, in our prison libraries there, there was a lot of rare materials, rare books published on the history of the Russian Civil War that I hadn’t even seen in Moscow, so I took advantage of that and I read as many as I could. And I also learned Spanish because again you have to do something, you have to do something with your time, you have to fill your head with something useful. And so this is this is how your day goes. And as I mentioned, it’s all scheduled by the minute, when they give you the meals, when they take you out to walk, and then for the lights out in the evening. And 1 other sort of consequence of this regime that I was held in, essentially sitting as the iron mask from the famous novel, is that you’re also completely deprived of any telephone contact with your family. In the 2 years and 3 months that I’ve been imprisoned, I only once was able to speak with my wife on the phone and only twice to my 3 children. And so this has gone back to what we discussed. This is an old very Soviet habit of the Kremlin when they try to punish not just political opponents themselves but their families as well.

Damir: So, I guess this gets to the foundational or the existential question, which is Why? You know, why put a human in solitary confinement in a Cyprian prison a world away? Why?

Vladimir: Why do they do it?

Damir: Yeah. Why were you there?

Vladimir: Well, because the enemy must be punished, right? And I got a very clear message during my so-called trial. And in fact, you know, my wife wrote to me, we communicated through letters. That was the only way we could keep in touch. And she wrote to me after I got my 25 year sentence back in April of 2023. This was the highest sentence for political prisoners since Stalin’s time, since late 40s, early 50s. Nothing, nothing even close happened since then. And so she wrote to me that I always had this tendency before to sort of basically, I always doubted if I was able to achieve anything of effect, anything of value, I would always err on the side of underestimating everything that we could do and could accomplish. And Evgenia, my wife, wrote to me that, I think your self-esteem should go up a little bit after this 25 year sentence. Frankly, it’s like a medal. And all jokes aside, this sentence that I received, and the sentence that Alexei Navalny received, and the sentence that Ilya Yashin received, and many other colleagues of mine, has have shown, these sentences have shown, what the Putin regime is really afraid of. In my case, it wasn’t just a public opposition to the war in Ukraine, it wasn’t just a public advocacy on behalf of political prisoners, it wasn’t just sort of public speeches in international platforms talking about the illegitimacy, the illegality of Vladimir Putin bypassing the constitutional term limits, for example, and staying in power indefinitely. This was all in my sentence too, so we know that these things have really irritated them. But sort of the unspoken and unwritten charge, that I was convicted for was, also my involvement in the passage of Magnitsky laws, the passage of Magnitsky acts in several Western countries beginning here in the United States. These were the laws that imposed targeted sanctions, visa and financial sanctions on key officials of the Kremlin, on key officials of the Putin regime. And frankly, there are a few things that they feared more than losing their coveted access to Western countries, to Western institutions, to Western financial systems. And so just to drive home the point, The judge that gave me my 25-year sentence was the same judge who imprisoned Sergei Magnitsky back in 2008. He was 1 of the first people sanctioned by the United States government under the Magnitsky Act. So if there was, you know, there couldn’t have been a clearer message that the Kremlin could send in this. And so then, of course, the enemy has to be punished. And so this is why Siberia, this is why solitary confinement, this is why these conditions that can only be described as torturous, according to international law. Torture can be not only of the physical kind, I think a lot of people when they think about torture, they only imagine the physical things, you know, when they break you back, when you give you electric shock and all the rest of it. And by the way, these things happen, these things are rampant in Putin’s prison system. But for the sort of more high-profile political prisoners, they use a different kind of torture. They use the psychological and mental torture. And to tell you that it’s not, it’s no better than the physical kind. In fact, it could be much more difficult.

Damir: I mean, do you think the release of Russian political prisoners will help the anti-Putin opposition inside Russia and without?

Vladimir: Well, first of all, I think what happened with us gives a lot of hope to so many others who are still languishing in Putin’s Gulag. Because 1 other measure of, I guess you can describe it as a sort of a way of applying mental pressure on prisoners, Every day, whenever I wrote anything, like any official paper you write to the prison director, for example, any time you are told to present yourself, like say your name, say your cell number and all the rest of it, you also have to state the date of your release, the length of your prison sentence. In my case, that’s the date that’s going to stay in my memory forever. April the 21st, 2047, This was when I was scheduled to get out. Of course, that date was purely theoretical because I would never have survived that. Because after 2 FSB organized poisonings, I don’t exactly have the state of health to. Even for the most healthy person in the world, the Russian Gulag is not exactly a good place to be, let alone for people like Alexei Navalny or myself who have survived what we did. And so I had to sort of pronounce this date every day and so do all the political prisoners who remain in Putin’s Gulag now. And I’m thinking in particular of people like Alexei Goronov, a Moscow municipal counselor who was the first person to be arrested and criminally charged for public opposition to the war in Ukraine. I’m thinking of Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist from Siberia, mother of 2 daughters who was also in prison for her public opposition to the war. I’m thinking of Igor Baryshnikov, an engineer from Kaliningrad, who has been in prison for his anti-war stance and so many others. And these people every day, they have to sort of publicly name this release date. And all I have to say, frankly, it really gets on you when you do this day after day after day. And when all you do is you wake up in the same cell, not doing anything, not speaking to anyone, not going anywhere, not being able to even call your loved ones, it really gets in you. And so I think what happened on the 1st of August with this release gives hope to a lot of people back in Russia, back in Putin’s Gulag, that these dates, that this release date that they have to pronounce, that it’s not actually connected to reality. And that if enough people of goodwill in the free world decide that they’re not okay with this, they’re not okay with so many innocent people being confined to prisons, being away from their loved ones, only because they’re opposed to Putin’s aggressive war, only because they’re opposed to Putin’s aggressive war, only because they’re opposed to Putin’s dictatorship, that this public opinion can actually work. And that there is a way that these people will be free much, much sooner than their official prison papers say. And as I’ve said, I’m going to dedicate my time and I’m going to dedicate all the strength that I have left to advocating to campaign for all of those Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians who are still stuck back in those gulags and those prisons and are not going to rest until the day they are

Damir: free. And Vladimir, so how do you break through? I mean, I remember listening to your CNN interview as you are led through the Omsk airport, and you’re there in your black long johns and a t-shirt and your shower sandals and handcuffs. And You’re going through a commercial air terminal with people who are going about their lives. You look at the most recent polling around the war in Ukraine, And there’s a lot of Russians who have been remarkably little interest in it, at least according to the polls. So people are going about their lives, they are living their lives with a war that is going on that they’re either less aware of than they might be or really have made a decision about. How do you begin to continue? How do you make that case, especially since you’re in Russia. I mean, you’ve talked often about going back as a Russian politician. You know, that’s something that you did at enormous cost. That’s something that Alexei Navalny did at tremendous cost. How do you carry on that conversation with the Russian people? Because inevitably, that’s where it has to come from, right?

Vladimir: Absolutely. But David, before we talk any more about this, let’s please never use the word polls when we talk about an authoritarian regime. It’s completely meaningless. I mean, when people talk about polls or elections in Putin’s Russia, I don’t know if they’re joking or they’re just being provocative, because dictatorships don’t do polls, dictatorships don’t do elections. These are all sort of notions from a democratic society. When first of all, when people actually have access to information, as opposed to just being brainwashed by government propaganda. But secondly, when people are not afraid to speak their mind, and when people don’t think that if they answer in a quote unquote incorrect way, there’ll be consequences for themselves and for their families. So let’s just forget about polls and elections and everything that you used to hear in the US that these notions do not apply to authoritarian countries. In fact, Boris Nemtsov, my close friend, my mentor, the Russian opposition leader who was murdered on Putin’s orders in February of 2015, he always said that in the conditions of an authoritarian state like Russia under Putin, where there are no free elections, where there are no meaningful and reliable opinion polls, the best way to test the real state of public opinion is to actually see at what sort of views, what sort of positions the regime persecutes more. And it is enough to look at the scale of repression in the last 2 and a half years in Russia against people who are coming out publicly against the war in Ukraine to see that, you know, what these so-called polls say is actually really removed from reality. There have been tens of thousands of police detentions across Russia for anti-war demonstrations since February 2022 until today. There are hundreds of people who are in prison today in Putin’s Goliath because they have publicly spoken out against the war in Ukraine. I’ve seen many of these people on my prison transfer from Moscow to Siberia. I’ve seen them When I was still in my pre-trial detention center in the prison in Moscow, I could still actually communicate with people. It is a very large quantity of people, and that’s only a drop in the ocean. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. And So let’s not forget about that when we speak about public opinion. But you’re absolutely right that, of course, there are a lot of people in Russia who are either indifferent or who back what the Putin regime is doing in Ukraine. It is tragic. It is something that I don’t even know what words are used here to describe my emotions. Something that makes me very angry, very sad at the same time, needless to say. But it is also something that frankly should not be surprising after a quarter century of one-man dictatorship. Vladimir Putin’s been in power for 25 years. Let’s not forget that. 1 of the first things he did after coming to power was shut down or take over independent television networks to make sure that Russian society only receives officially approved messages, officially approved propaganda. And so after 25 years of propaganda, after 25 years of brainwashing, after 25 years of repression, when those people who are publicly coming out against the regime and its policies are murdered, are imprisoned, are in the best case exiled, I think it’s hard to expect, frankly, that a large part of society would not be affected by this. And it is. And by the way, when we speak about the fact that a large part of Russian society bears responsibility for what Putin is doing in Ukraine today and for what Putin is doing generally, that is absolutely true. But let’s not forget also that a lot of this responsibility is also borne by these Western countries who for so many years, despite our cries, shouts, warnings, I don’t know how else to express it, continue to engage with Vladimir Putin, to legitimize Vladimir Putin in the eyes of the international community, to trade with him, to make deals with him, to invite him to international summits, you know, to look into his eyes and see his soul, to engage in resets and so on and so forth. This is a fact as well. And let’s not forget about the responsibility that Western leaders bear for what is happening in Russia and for what is happening in Ukraine today. But it is absolutely clear to my mind that once this regime is out of power, it is only a question of when and not if, again, this is me speaking as a historian, not as a politician, it is only a question of when, not if, when this regime is out of power, There will have to be enormous work undergone in Russia to try to deal with the consequences of this. I mean, we wouldn’t be the first 1 who have to do this. There are a lot of countries in the world who have gone through this trauma of dictatorship, who have gone through this difficult process of transitioning from dictatorships to democracy, very different countries in very different geographical regions in very difficult historical circumstances. And look, you know, Argentina after military dictatorship, South Africa after apartheid, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after communism, of course, Germany after Nazism after 1945. So this is a road that has been traveled many times. We will not be the first ones to do it. But to me, 1 of the most important things we’ll have to work on, I already mentioned the advocacy for political prisoners, that is absolutely paramount, but no less important, is working on this roadmap, if you will, on how we can heal and transition and yes, educate Russian society post-Putin about everything that happened. There will have to be acknowledgement, there will have to be public reflection, there will have to be public responsibility. That’s something that never happened really after 1991 in Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet regime. And this is what brought us to poop. I’ve spoken and written about it many times, including on the pages of the Washington Post. We will have to do this work. And so this is something, this is a roadmap that we need to be preparing today, because if we go by Russian history, major political changes in our country usually happen like this, unexpectedly and suddenly. And the next time will be absolutely the same. And just think of the fact that both the Romanov Empire at the beginning of the 20th century and the Soviet regime at the end of the 20th century collapsed in 3 days. It’s not a figure of speech. I’m talking literally. And This is how it’s going to happen next time. And so we all need to be preparing for our part how we deal with this inside of Russia. But also I think it is very important for the free world, for leaders of Western democracies, to prepare on their side as well. Because once things really do change in Russia, and once we do start this work on transitional justice, on this transition from dictatorship to democracy inside of Russia, it is very important that the free world stands ready to help reintegrate that new democratic post-Booten Russia back into the civilized world, back into the rule-based international order, back into the big Europe that we all want to see. If we still believe in that goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace, a goal was expressed famously 35 years ago by an American president speaking in West Germany, as you remember. If we still believe in the goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace, That goal will only be possible when Russia, which is the largest country in Europe, also becomes peaceful and democratic. A Europe whole, free and in peace, will only be possible with a peaceful and democratic Russia as a part of it. And this is a roadmap that we need to start preparing today.

Damir: We have, alas, gone ridiculously over time, I am told. But it has been worth every second, and I wish we could go on. I’m sorry, David. I wish we could go on for another…

Vladimir: …forgive me for this.

Damir: I guess maybe this conversation will have to be carried on in the pages of the Washington Post, where there are pages and pages waiting to be filled with your words, Vladimir.

Vladimir: That would be very happy to, and I’m always honored by the opportunity. And I’m glad I could carry on from prison as well. I don’t know how many colonists you had writing from behind bars, but I was honored by the opportunity that you allowed me to continue this.

Damir: There also weren’t that many who were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for commentary for their work both inside and outside of prison. How did the word of the Pulitzer get to you? Did it get to you?

Vladimir: Well, speaking about surreal, it did get to me. It was on 1 of the visits by my lawyer, who usually came to see me once or twice a week. So I’d be escorted by the prison guards into this small, tiny Roman lock behind a glass window and then my lawyer would come in from the outside and sit on the other side. And so we would sort of speak about, you know, things in preparation for our court hearings and so on. And 1 day in May, he walks in and says that I’ve been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. And I have to say, nothing, this was before the exchange, right? But by that time, nothing had ever felt more surreal. I was, of course, deeply honored and deeply humbled by this recognition, but it also felt like something out of another planet, frankly, when I was sitting in that solitary cell in Siberia. And I’d never imagined the words Pulitzer and my name in the same sentence. So I cannot express enough how grateful and humble I am for this recognition, but it’s something that also felt completely unreal and as if I’m watching some kind of a film as well. I mean, I’ve been watching a lot of films this year. They’ve been really good ones. And I just hope that, you know, sometime soon the film and the reality actually syncing together.

Damir: Well, it’s really nice at least temporarily to end on a happy ending. Vladimir, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us on Washington Post Live. And thanks to all of you for joining us for more conversations like this 1, though probably not like this 1. Please sign up for a Washington Post subscription or get a free trial by visiting Washingtonpost.com slash live. I’m David Chippley and thank you again. Thanks for watching!