The Four Bullets
Disclaimer: This text was originally written as an essay for an English class, so it doesn’t involve a lot of analytics from my philosophical standpoint.
4 gunshots lit up the dark February night in Moscow. Boris Nemtsov, ex-First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in pre-Putin era, a famous Russian opposition leader and a member of the Russian regional parliament of the Yaroslavl region, was killed on Feb. 27, 2015, some 500 feet from the Kremlin — the center of the Russian political power. His killers were found but not the “customer” who ordered the assassination.
I vividly remember the evening when it happened. I stayed at my friend’s home; everyone went to sleep and I was sitting in the kitchen reading the news. And then the notification came: “Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow”. With heart torn in pieces, conscience stumped and aghast, all the energy and will were soaked away by the bullets that also holed my body. It was like a thunder during a bright day. I couldn’t believe that a politician of such a caliber could be killed in the heart of Russia’s capital. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first political assassination in Russia, many journalists and politicians were killed during the last 15 years. But that one was really shocking, and profoundly important to me. It was the first time that I followed political event with such determination and focus. I spent the whole night reading breaking news about this tragedy. I hoped to hear updated news denying the original ones. But this was the truth.
On Sunday, March 1, 2015, I went to the memorial march which was held in Moscow. That day approximately 60’000 people came to the center of Moscow to honor the memory of Boris Nemtsov. The never ending stream of people slowly moved down the embankment of the Moscow river toward the Big Moskvoretsky bridge — the place of assassination, because of that the distance which usually took 15 minutes to walk, took about an hour. I never thought that I could meet so many people who shared my feelings in a single place. I saw tens of thousands of people in front of me and the same amount behind me. The bridge and the embankment were fully occupied by people who came to show their respect to the person who was important to them, who was the symbol of hope and the motor that consolidated forces of opposition in Russia. I slowly came to the place where Boris Nemtsov was shot. I put flowers and a poster on the top of a huge memorial made of flowers. People were crying.
On Monday I went to school dressed in all black. I bought a newspaper which front page had a bird’s eye view of the bridge and embankment with thousands of people and a huge header “Nemtsov bridge. Once again he brought society and freedom together”. The confidence that the world will never be the same for this country filled me inside; with this pushing will I stepped inside the school. The first subject that day was a Social science class. I expected to have a conversation about this issue, or at least a minute of memory in the honor of Boris Nemtsov. Nothing of the kind. Instead I was forced by the teacher to put away the newspaper. Impregnated with anger, frustration, I made a hard job not to stand up and leave the room. I patiently waited for the bell with the newspaper in my hands; I wasn’t paying any attention to the lesson. After the bell, the reality continued to stab my naivety in its back with careless students, hypocritical teachers, etc. Only a few people were talking about it and only in private conversations. This tragic event wasn’t even mentioned on the school radio. Being frustrated, I couldn’t believe that the school’s administration and teachers decided to say nothing about it as if the cynical assassination of the opposition’s leader was a common event which shouldn’t be noticed at all. “Is that the way the life should be?” — I asked myself. Fortunately, I found out that my favorite teacher was also on the march, and shared all the depressing feelings that I had. That day, I spent all 15-minute breaks between my classes talking with the teacher about Nemtsov, the march, how once he held the teacher’s lesson in school, how they’ve talked later for a few hours.
A year and a half passed from that day. The memorial on the bridge still exists, however, the city’s administration tried to destroy it numerous times, but the defenders who guard it 24/7 build it from the scratch again and again. I liked to come there to think while sitting on the pavement with cars elapsing behind me. Every time I brought two red roses (in Russia people bring even number of flowers only to funerals or when visiting cemetery). If I hadn’t had school, I’d have been a defender there. Citizens of Moscow signed a petition to rename the bridge as Nemtsov’s bridge, but the petition hasn’t been approved yet. I doubt that it will be approved ever. The opposition, as always, after a few months started to quarrel, when the elections to the Parliament started; they humiliatingly lost the elections. The ruling party got more than 2/3 of the votes, so it can easily change the Constitution, the other 1/3 was shared by their vassal parties. I was so naive thinking that something could move this passive mammock — the Russian demos.
The killing had a profound impact on me. I respected and liked Boris Nemtsov as a person, public figure and politician. His demonstrative and cynical assassination was the tipping point for me. I never liked Russian government, I was strongly against all of its policies from the ban on foreign adoptions to the invasion to Georgia(country), Ukraine, annexation of the Crimea. I strongly supported the opposition, but now, after assassination of Boris Nemtsov, all my feelings turned into violent hatred. Probably, it wasn’t the direct order of the Russian ruling powers to kill Nemtsov, but the killers were definitely inspired by the attitude of the Russian state towards any manifestation of views which didn’t coincide with official propaganda that named the opposition “the traitors of the nation”. Policies and actions of the Russian state which do not treat people as individuals whose lives, freedom and pursuit of happiness are the sacred values which any state should uphold and protect, the massive brainwash which it perpetrates on Russian people, its lust for power led to a terrible event. The smoke has dissipated and I clearly saw that those people who were at the steering wheel of the Russian state were not humans anymore.
