My Memory of Boris Nemtsov
(Written by Mika and Timo Peltola)
I turned on the radio and could hardly believe the news: Boris Nemtsov had been shot dead in Moscow during the night.
Bullets from an assasin had struck him down on the bridge that crosses the Moscow river, only two hundred metres from the Red Square…
We have sadly become accustomed to the news of imprisonments or killings of Russian dissidents and journalists. But this felt personal.
I met Boris Nemtsov once. At the time he was the vice-Prime Minister of Russia and a star of the Russian political elite. I was heading a company called Onninen at the time, and Russia was a growing market for us.
In 1998 I was invited among a delegation of Finnish CEOs to participate in a series of negotiations with Boris Nemtsov and the President of the Carelian Republic Viktor Stepanov.
We held meetings in the city of Kostamus and at the gigantic mining complex next to it.
After long talks we were transported to a stately timber frame guest-house where our hosts received us, accompanied by TV-crews. The parliamentary elections were coming up and I soon realised that the dinner was a major campaign-event, meant to prove the superiority of the newly formed party United Russia.
It was a dinner like no other. Sturgeon and beluga caviar were plentiful. Our hosts were drinking Scotch Whiskey like water throughout the dinner. Astonishingly the hosts also managed to give several TV-interviews during the dinner. The campaigning was unconventional, to say the least. But so are many things in the Russian Federation.
In the midst of this mayhem, vice- prime minister Boris Nemtsov stood out from the rest. There was an unusual dignity about him. He spoke separately and at length with each of the guests. There was no bombast. He spoke without arrogance, as among a group of old friends. He was his own man.
After this meeting, I followed Boris Nemtsov’s career closely. His star was ascendant, and for a moment it looked like he was heading for the presidency of the Russian Federation.
What particularly impressed me was that while in office, he presented his boss president Boris Yeltsin with a petition to end the tragic war in Chehnya. The petition had over a million signatures, including his own.
But it wasn’t to be. Some time later, another man called Vladimir Putin stepped out from the shadows and succeeded Boris Yeltsin. Boris Nemtsov fell into disfavour and left government. He now began his second career, as a high-ranking member of the Russian opposition.
I was thinking about all this after I heard the news of his murder. I wondered what could have become of Russia if his career would have taken a better turn. When my son Mika visited me later that day I told him that I was deeply saddened by the news.
In the year that has passed since Boris Nemtsov’s death, Russia has kept spiralling downward. People are getting killed, including civilans and children in Syria. I wish there was more hope for the Russian people but it’s hard to see any light at the moment.
To me Boris Nemtsov represented the best of mother Russia. Even as the Russian opposition got marginalised, he kept working for his democratic cause. Just before he was killed, he finished a thorough and critical report on the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
I’ve been told that fresh flowers can still be found on the bridge where Boris Nemtsov died. The flowers and cards are swiftly taken away by the authorities. But the next day, the flowers and poems are back on the bridge.
