In the analysis free world which constitutes the Western media discourse on foreign affairs it is the case that any Russian “dissident” is automatically feted, lauded, held up as an example of the ‘future Russia’, described as ‘a leader of the opposition’ and so on. British-Russian Kara-Murza is a case in point. Recently released from prison in Russia as part of a prisoner swap he has been giving interviews to the liberal (i.e. almost all of it) press in the UK. This is the Guardian’s sympathetic treatment of him.
The first point to say is that Kara-Murza’s view is absolutely aligned with the State Department narrative on Ukraine, the one followed 95% of the time by all Western media. Russia needs to “rejoin the International World Order”. This involves regime change. When this happens Putin and others, in Russia, will be tried in court for their crimes. (From the piece in the Guardian it seems he is also salivating about trying Trump and other Western leaders at the same time). This is the standard Western propaganda narrative; there is an ‘international rules-based world’ order based on the United Nations. The West obeys and follows this order. Russia, and China, do not. The best critique of this propaganda that I have read is in Richard Sakwa’s The Lost Peace – How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War. [1] In this book, Sakwa discusses how the West has substituted its own liberal world order, based around US hegemony, for the actual international UN system. At the same time they pretend that their liberal order is the international order. Sakwa calls this the Great Substitution. The West breaks international law frequently. The Iraq invasion of 2003 and the bombing of Serbia to force them to accept Kosovo breaking away in the 1990s were both violations of the UN Charter. The 2011 operation in Libya was tenuously justified by a UN resolution but it was sophistry to say that a resolution to protect civilians justified regime change. (At one point in this operation France simply dropped weapons in to support the regime-change rebels in direct and flagrant violation of a UN Resolution; these weapons subsequently leaked around the region and added to chaos and violence). The twisting of the resolution on Libya undermined the UN; why would Russia trust them again? But, when it suits them they cry very loudly about UN principles. The same game is played with war crimes. The West is eager to denounce Russia for war crimes in Ukraine. Meanwhile the carnage in Gaza, and in the West Bank where the Israeli army regularly shoots dead children for throwing stones at armoured vehicles attracts no criticism at all. (Indeed the previous UK government even tried to block the ICC process to hold Israeli leaders accountable). The UN system supports the independence of sovereign nations. It does not mandate any particular political system as the ‘right’ one. For example; there is nothing whatsoever in the UN Charter which mandates that countries should be liberal democracies, let alone permits military action to try to force small countries to adopt this system. On the contrary, the UN system supports each country finding its own path to development. Kara-Murza simply adopts the Western propaganda line. Of course this makes him loved by the liberal propagandists.
Specific comments:
he’d also been poisoned – twice – targeted by the same FSB (Federal Security Service) unit that had poisoned Navalny.
I really don’t have enough information but I am fairly sceptical about all this. No intelligence or security service is perfect, but is the FSB really so incompetent that they continually fail in the simple task of poisoning someone? The story about the “FSB Unit” poisoning Navalny is a fake media narrative. The claims by Bellingcat (a propaganda outfit loosely linked to Western intelligence and Western media ops) related to an FSB unit surveilling Navalny. As far as I could see it was simply a jump to the claim that the agents doing the surveillance had actually poisoned Navalny. Meanwhile, the “multiple narrative lines” put out by the Navalny team; it was the cup in the airport, something in the hotel room, the underpants, were not questioned. But, I digress.
Siberian gulag
Well; no. He was in a prison in Siberia. Or a penal colony. Use of the word ‘gulag’ is really a piece of hate-speech. The idea is to develop the idea that modern Russia is the same as the Stalinist system of the USSR. In turn this is supposed to support the idea that Putin is trying to “recreate the USSR”. It is a device of the kind that Goebbels might have used.
I felt like I was living inside these books because it’s astonishing and shocking, and, frankly, very sad how, all these decades later, nothing has changed. Even the minutest details of what a prison cell is like, how the walk is organised, how prison guards speak to you, how the prison transportation works, everything is exactly the same.
Well; we only have Kara-Murza’s word for this. But, maybe. Russia does change slowly. By the way the Victorian practice of slopping out, (prisoners using buckets for the toilet), was only abolished in English prisons in 1996.
For his close friend, Bill Browder, the businessman and anti-corruption campaigner who lobbied tirelessly for Kara-Murza’s release, it’s “been such a gift. I was sure he was going to die in custody”. As did Kara-Murza.
Ah. Kara-Murza is a “close friend” of Bill Browder. Bill Browder is a British-American financier who was active in the chaotic period in Russia in the 1990s when bribery and corruption were the order of the day. Since 2005 he has been blocked from Russia. In his telling he is an “anti-corruption” campaigner. He is a very vocal critique of the “Putin regime” and actively calls for aggressive actions against Russia. His story is that his lawyer in Russia uncovered a fraud and was persecuted as a result. He is, I would guess, wealthy so I am cautious about what I can say. But, there is another version of what his business practices were in Russia and how he was able to exploit the chaos of the time. At any event, we can note the connection between this fervent enemy of the Russian state and Kara-Murza.
He talks about how, as he was taxiing down the runway of Vnukovo airport, the FSB agent sitting next to him told him to look out of the window because it would be the last time he’d see his country. “I just laughed in his face and said, ‘Look man, I’m a historian. I don’t only think, I don’t only believe, I know I will be back home and it’s going to be much quicker than you imagine.’”
“But the Alpha Group, the FSB special unit that was escorting us, I saw ideological hatred. They believe in this stuff and that’s even scarier.”
The “ideological hatred” may have been a hatred for his ideology. Either way Kara-Murza can’t be that much of a historian. History does not (unless you accept the Marxist view of history) allow us to “know” about the future; only make informed predictions. It sounds like it is Kara-Murza who has a blind faith, or ideology. At any event, this dovetails nicely with the Western State Department narrative, so he is being made something of in the Western media. (Though, I do notice a slight caution, about getting quite too close to him, in this Guardian article, which is interesting).
Notes
1. Sakwa, Richard. The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War. Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. 2023