Opposition Russian Leader Boris Nemstov Assassinated on February 27, 2015 before trying to Reveal Evidence of Russian Military Involvement in the Ukraine!
Now Putin has Mistakenly Created a Russian Martyr.
For some time now, Boris had been compiling a research pamphlet entitled, “Putin And War” [NYTimes, Feb28, 2015]. It was a direct indictment of Putin and his sycophants’ involvement in officially using the Russian military apparatus to propagate war in the Ukraine. Boris Nemstov, like most Putin opposition leaders, realized that his compulsive investigations into Putin’s ascendancy to the Kremlin accompanied by a string of corruptions, might lead to Boris’s eventual death. However, like many individuals who deem it necessary to uncover the deceits and machinations of pugnacious leaders such as Putin these people sometimes confuse their just cause with invincibility. Boris was no different. He was a former deputy prime minister and understood all too well that his work to uncover Putin’s miscreant deeds in ripping off the Sochi Olympics to the tune of $25 Billion Dollars was dangerous.
Yet these “agitators” for justice and transparency imagine that they would live to see the day that their life’s efforts had been justified. Let me quote to you from the Andrew E. Kramer’s NY Times article:
“He [Boris] was afraid of being killed,” Ms. Albats [Editor of The NYTimes Magazine] said. “And he was trying to convince himself and me, they [Putin, FSB, etc.]wouldn’t touch him because he was a member of the Russian government, a vice premier, and they wouldn’t want to create a precedent. Because, he said, one time the power will change hands in Russia again, and those who served Putin wouldn’t want to create this precedent.”
Clearly, Boris Nemtsov was wrong! Putin and his cronies had no hesitation whatsoever. They did what most KGB operatives had been trained to do when they were perplexed and confused by surrounding events, shoot those ‘propaganda agitators’ dead. Therefore the surrounding political cacophony that the agitators created would be terminated [without prejudice]. As usual Putin, a Russian born in Leningrad and trained in East Germany by the Stasi, forgot that more than anything else, the Russian people adore their poets, writers, and freedom fighters and to make matters even worse, the Russians absolutely adore their martyrs.
One only has to recall the extensive list of Russian martyrs from the 19th through the 21st centuries to realize that in the long term, martyrs for political freedom always trump the extant corrupted leader. Remember that in the famous novel by Boris Pasternak, Dr Zhivago, the Soviet political commissar who happened to be Dr Zhivago’s step-brother was astounded to see how many Russians had paid their respects to the late physician/poet Zhivago who had died under the ruthless reign of Stalin. The step brother says in the book [and movie]: “Oh, how we Russians, do love our poets; even though we were never officially allowed to read them [Zhivago—read Pasternak].”
Once again, the political repression of the Soviet era ascends like a phoenix stoked by the burning embers of extensive political corruption in the Kremlin; accompanied by its twin, financial ruin of the Russian economy; resulting from completely incompetent governance. Whatever heuristic model we in the west may conjure up, the one that hovers over this familiar narrative is the psychological imperative of repetition compulsion. That is no matter how Putin may want to change his own personal behavior as a former low level KGB thug [which I first identified almost a decade ago in the American Intelligence Journal], he cannot and will not be capable of changing his behavior patterns.
He was an intelligence operative destined by profession and personality to remain a petty intelligence operative, resorting to the most primitive forms of persuasion accorded to gangsters and fascists. Putin understands all too well the nature of assassinating an opponent. He will provide a nonsensical narrative along the lines that Boris had been killed by Chechens or a distraught lover who had needed an abortion; but all these ersatz narratives will fail in the cauldron of human compassion; political resistance and the most damaging phenomena of all—the ‘blowback’.
Now, Putin has unwittingly created the very persona that a competent assassin would have never created—a Russian Martyr.
Why do I say ‘competent assassin’?
In the profession of assassination [which is a profession as is kinetic warfare], the assassin will always allow for a scenario that can never; but never, be traced to him or her. In this case, the culprit was so blatant that it was almost comical to deny Putin’s involvement. Boris was shot in the head from a drive by car; as he was walking by the Kremlin with a lady friend in the middle of the night. Putin’s fingerprints could not have been more embedded into the tissue of the crime because of its propitious timing [just before the release of the pamphlet] and the obvious, if not blatant location where the assassination took place—right outside of the Kremlin walls.
Once a bullet passes through the flesh of a political opponent, it is wise for the extant leadership to say as little as possible. The more that they say, as Putin is wont to do, the more they accuse themselves of the crime. My prediction of a decade ago still stands: Putin, “A KGB Agent Forever”, will end up as the product of his own psycho-political dynamics : self-destructing! Like all leaders who must use fear to control their constituents, then fear will be the very emotion that will turn one of his most loyal lieutenants against Putin.
Recall how quickly Stalin’s entourage turned against him, once they were no longer afraid of him.
I would like to end this paean to Putin’s incompetency with a German proverb:
“He who would rule [effectively] must hear and be deaf; see and be blind.”
