"And this, for New Year's Eve" – this is what people say about food stored in the fridge that they would like to eat now, but can't. It is a special type of food: scarce, expensive, and, ideally, delicious. We set it aside, hoping that New Year's celebrations will not be ruined by "Oreshnik"[1] reruns, leaving us something to enjoy for the occasion.
For New Year's, in our political fridge, we have the opposition.
Elvira Vikhareva
Russians Lack Clear Routes For Emigration – Read: Salvation
The very word "fridge" has taken on a grotesque meaning for us, thanks to Professor Solovey.[2] As a skilled PR specialist, he successfully launched the semi-myth, semi-meme that Putin had died and was lying in a fridge.[3] Thus, this once innocent and usually white appliance now carries an additional meaning – that of a black box, the kind used in games.
But back to the opposition. Starting with – and mainly focusing on – the foreign-based one. We must admit, with nostalgic regret, that it has essentially perished. Occasionally, there's a faint breath from the fridge, sometimes even a crackle – someone munching on someone else's bones – but on the whole, we observe no signs of life.
What is the purpose of an opposition? To fight for power. And what is our opposition abroad doing? Like any other in such a situation, it fights exclusively for grants.
I am talking about organized forces, not individual activists who live somewhere in Georgia or Germany and genuinely wish Russia all the best. They work, and in their spare time, write postcards to political prisoners, picket embassies – doing what little can be done in exile.
The political forces, however, those clinging to memories of power and budgets, are up to something else entirely. First, they are devouring each other. While Ukraine fends off Putin's troops, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's "Anti-War Committee" fends off attacks from the late Alexei Navalny's "Anti-Corruption Foundation" (ACF).[4] And vice versa, although, to give the ACF its due, they are the instigators here.
Which Russians, including émigrés, have benefited from these squabbles? Who has received tangible help? There are two key questions to measure the effectiveness of the opposition abroad: visas and bank cards. Are Russians better received in Europe – even if not all, at least those fleeing the war? And has it become easier for them to open bank accounts (an essential function for living a normal life)?
The answers to both are negative. In the nearly three years since February 2022, Russians still lack clear routes for emigration – read: salvation from the state.
There are no straightforward rules or instructions for getting to Europe and starting a new life there. Everything is done in secrecy, through connections, by some incredible effort.
Putin Has Stolen Christmas
We understand perfectly well that no foreign-based opposition will overthrow Putin – but on this mundane level, could they not have...? No, as we see, they could not. What could they do? Set up a bot farm to embezzle some money. Award themselves grand salaries at the expense of American taxpayers. Hold many conferences with delicious breakfasts and lavish dinners.
And the outcome? The net result is many conflicts, mutual exposés – and nothing more. It is no secret that there is a struggle to claim the title of "main opposition." A title that would bring cozy seats in international committees and the resources that come with them.
If we ask the trio of organizers of a recent Berlin rally – Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin, and Vladimir Kara-Murza – what they aimed to achieve and what they actually achieved, the honest answer would be: influence. But in whose interest? Who specifically received help and support from them, even though Navalnaya is the head of a well-known foundation (not for fighting corruption but for human rights), and Yashin and Kara-Murza, riding the wave of their release, could have benefited more than just themselves through endless meetings with endless politicians.
Two simple questions. First, what have these meetings achieved? Year after year, we see photos of opposition leaders with Biden, Scholz, etc., yet we have never heard anything concrete about their discussions.
Second, how do they support themselves in Europe, where they neither work nor write articles – meaning they cannot be suspected of Leninist methods of earning a living?
Logically, the answer to the second question stems from the first. And equally logically, we will never hear either answer.
Russians, of course, still hope that the opposition is lying in the fridge, ready to rise from it at the dictator's death like Ilya Muromets from his stove – to build us communism, or rather, the beautiful Russia of the future.[5] What began as a meme has turned into farce. No one returns from the fridge. There will be no New Year's. Putin has stolen Christmas better than any Grinch.
Of course, there is still armed opposition – those who supposedly face bullets instead of protests. But it is hard to view them without irony. Take Ilya Ponomarev, who long promised to seize the Kremlin. It turns out that instead, he seized a modest 80 percent of the funding for his "Congress of People's Deputies" and happily departed for America with it.
What Is Left? The Underground Domestic Opposition
And so it goes, wherever you look. No legion or corps, even if they exist in numbers greater than zero, will save anyone or overthrow the dictatorship. All are controlled by Ukraine, whose tasks are much more specific right now, and it sees the armed Russian opposition solely as a PR project. Creating a fifth column for itself is certainly not on its agenda.
What is left? The underground domestic opposition. Stripped of the right to participate in elections, deprived of all possible rights, branded as "foreign agents," imprisoned in detention centers and penal colonies...
And yet, it has better odds, because it exists exactly as Akhmatova described: I was then with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were.[6]
Should we take pride in this? Should we see it as hope for the future? Only the future itself will show.
But I believe that if change happens, it will come from within, not from outside. And new times will arrive in Russia not in a sealed train car but stepping out of the entrance of some high-rise on the outskirts of Moscow.
The only question is whether we will live to see that glorious time – no one can say for sure right now.
*Elvira Vikhareva is a renowned Russian opposition politician based in Russia. In 2023, she was poisoned with heavy metal salts.
[1] The Oreshnik is a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile.
[2] Valery Dmitriyevich Solovey is a Russian historian, political scientist, and conspiracy theorist
[3] "Russian political scientist named Valery Solovei has stoked a global frenzy with a sensational claim: that Vladmir Putin died last year and today is represented in public by a body double. The Kremlin elite, Solovei tells his half-million online followers, controls the double and has stuffed Putin's body in a freezer." Wsj.com/world/russia/putin-death-rumor-carlson-interview-5c58a974, February 10, 2024.
[4] "The past few months have been marked by a series of conflicts that shook the Russian emigrant community. First, it was 'revealed' that Leonid Nevzlin, who is one of the former owners of Yukos, a Moscow-based oil and gas company that the Russian government bought in the 1990s, supposedly hired criminals who assaulted several active members of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). Later, Maxim Katz, another well-known blogger and anti-Kremlin activist, accused the ACF of accepting millions of dollars in donations from businessmen not only responsible for Russia's 'unfair' market reforms but also involved in massive money-laundering schemes. All this has caused a split in the Russian dissident community since most of its members have taken sides in the clash," wrote Dr. Vladislav Inozemtsev, MEMRI Russian Media Studies Project Special Advisor, and Founder and Director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies. See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 664, Russian Emigrant Dissidents Are Not The Means Of Cracking Down On Putin's Regime – Change Will Come Only From Inside Russia, October 28, 2024.
[5] Ilya Muromets, a hero of the oldest known Old Russian byliny, or traditional heroic folk chants.
[6] Anna Akhmatova was a Russian poet, one of the most significant of the 20th century.
