Experienced human rights activist released during exchange: Russia falls into Stalinist times
BERLIN: Oleg Orlov, a human rights activist since the 1980s, believed that Russia had turned things around with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the assumption of power by a democratically elected president.
But then Vladimir Putin came to power, suppressed the opposition and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Eventually, Orlov, 71, was himself thrown in prison for opposing the war. Last week, he was released in the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War and forced into exile – just like the Soviet dissidents of his youth.
In an interview with the Associated Press in Berlin on Thursday, Orlov denounced the extent and severity of repression under Putin, saying people were being imprisoned simply for criticizing the government, something that had not been seen since the time of dictator Joseph Stalin.
And he vows to continue his work to free the many political prisoners in Russia and keep their names in the spotlight.
“We are slipping somewhere into the Stalin era,” said Orlov, who has shown signs of fatigue at times in the week since his release due to his hectic schedule of media interviews.
In February, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for writing an anti-war article. When he was unexpectedly transferred from a prison in central Russia last month, which eventually led to the prisoner exchange on August 1, he was awaiting transfer to a penal colony after losing an appeal.
The move came as a complete surprise, he told AP.
He was first told to write a petition for clemency to Putin – which he said he flatly refused to do. Days later, to his amazement, he was put in a van and driven to an airport in Samara and flown to Moscow.
“It’s a very strange feeling to come straight from prison and sit on a plane among free people,” Orlov said.
Three more days followed in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo prison, isolated in his cell, where he wrote a complaint about being denied access to his lawyer. He was then shown a document stating that he had been pardoned. He was put on a plane again, this time out of Russia, along with other released dissidents, and greeted in Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He had to smile as he remembered seeing familiar faces on the bus to the airport – the artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who was imprisoned for a small anti-war demonstration, the opposition politician Andrei Pivovarov and others.
“So when a state security agent announced (on the bus) that it was an exchange, it was already completely clear to us,” he said.
However, while in detention in Lefortovo, Orlov suspected that another criminal case was being prepared against him. When asked what charges the authorities might bring, he replied: “They would find one (without any problems).”
“The machinery of oppression … has been set in motion and is running on its own,” said the veteran human rights activist. “The machinery works to perpetuate itself and can only intensify and exacerbate the oppression.”
Memorial, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group co-founded by Orlov, says there are still over 760 political prisoners in jail in Russia. Another prominent human rights group, OVD-Info, says there are currently over 1,300 people imprisoned on politically motivated charges.
Some of them are isolated and have no access to lawyers or doctors, often on the orders of the authorities, Orlov said.
Opposition politicians such as the late Alexei Navalny or the recently exchanged Vladimir Kara-Murza were held in equally isolated conditions in remote penal colonies and their health deteriorated.
“My experience was much easier than that of many others,” Orlov said. Prison officials “never showed complete lawlessness towards me,” he added. “I was not singled out from the crowd.”
Nevertheless, it is important to support the growing number of those accused for political reasons, he said. This applies both to the headlines about their fate and to sending letters and care packages as well as supporting their families.
In prison, “you are always worried about your family. When you know that your family is doing well, it is a real peace. And in prison, the most important thing is not to despair and to find inner peace,” Orlov said.
In the stressful days since beginning his new life in exile, which he never wanted, Orlov has had little time to process his newfound freedom, and he is still not reunited with his wife.
But he is determined to continue his work at Memorial. He says there are things lawyers from outside Russia can do, such as maintaining the database of political prisoners and coordinating assistance to the bereaved.
However, a complete end to the repression can only come when Putin’s “repressive terror regime” ceases to exist, he says.
