Former human rights campaigner released after sharing views that Russia is regressing to Stalin
BERLIN: Oleg Orlov, a human rights activist since the 1980s, thinks Russia has turned the tables now that the Soviet Union has collapsed and a democratically elected president has emerged as its leader.
But then Vladimir Putin came to power, cracked down on dissent and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Orlov, 71, was eventually jailed for his opposition to the war. Last week, he was released in the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War and forced into exile, like many Soviet dissidents in his youth.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday in Berlin, Orlov denounced the scope and severity of the crackdown under Putin, with people being jailed simply for criticizing the authorities, a level not seen since the days of dictator Joseph Stalin.
And he pledged to continue working to free the large number of political prisoners in Russia and keep their names in the spotlight.
“We are entering the era of Stalin,” Orlov said, sometimes showing fatigue from a hectic media schedule in the week since his release.
He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in February for writing anti-war articles. When he was unexpectedly transferred out of a prison in central Russia last month, in a prisoner swap on Aug. 1, he is awaiting transfer to a penal colony after losing an appeal.
The move came as a surprise, he told AP.
At first, he was ordered to write a plea for mercy to Putin, which he says he flatly refused. A few days later, he was put in a van and driven to the airport in Samara, where he flew to Moscow as a surprise.
“Finding myself on a plane, among people who were freed, straight from prison, was a very strange feeling,” Orlov said.
Three days later, he was held in solitary confinement in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo prison, where he filed a complaint that he had been denied access to a lawyer. He was then given papers stating that he had been pardoned, and on another plane, this time he left Russia with other freed political dissidents, and was greeted in Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He began to smile as he remembered seeing familiar faces on the bus to the airport: artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who was imprisoned for a small anti-war protest, opposition politician Andrei Pivovarov and others.
“So when the state security officials announced (on the bus) that it was a swap, we understood,” he said.
However, while being held in Lefortovo, Orlov suspected that another criminal case was being prepared against him. As for the charges that the authorities could bring, he said, “they will find one charge without any problem.”
“The repressive mechanism has started to move and work on its own,” said a senior human rights campaigner. “It works to preserve itself and can only make the repression worse and more severe.”
Memorial, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group co-founded by Orlov, says there are more than 760 political prisoners currently detained in Russia. Another prominent human rights group, OVD-Info, says there are more than 1,300 prisoners currently detained in politically motivated cases.
Some face isolation, with no access to lawyers or doctors, often at the behest of authorities, Orlov said.
Opposition politicians, such as former President Alexei Navalny or the recently replaced former President Vladimir Kara-Murza, are being held in isolated conditions in remote prisons, and their health is deteriorating.
“My experience was much easier than most,” Orlov said. Prison officers “never violated the law against me,” he added. “I was not singled out.”
However, he also said it was important to help the growing number of politically charged people, whether it was by putting their terrible stories in the headlines, sending letters, sending gifts and helping their families.
In prison, “we always feel worried about our families. If you know that your family is okay, it gives you a lot of peace. And in prison, the most important thing is not to lose hope and to feel calm,” Orlov said.
In the hectic days since starting a new life in a foreign land he had never sought, Orlov had barely had time to process his newfound freedom, and he had yet to be reunited with his wife.
But he is committed to continuing his work with Memorial, and he says there is still more supporters can do outside Russia, such as maintaining a database of political prisoners and coordinating assistance to those in prison.
However, a complete halt to the crackdown will only happen if Putin's “repressive terrorist regime” ends, he said.
