Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader slain Friday night a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, was a true original, one of the towering figures of his country’s post-communist political odyssey.
We do not know yet who it was who shot him four times in the back. Various theories have been floated. But by far the most plausible is that his killers wanted to silence one of the most determined and courageous Russian campaigners for personal and political freedoms.
Whether Nemtsov offended by attacking the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin’s regime, the jingoistic imperialism of his Ukrainian campaign or even the massacre of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, it comes to the same thing in the end: He stood up consistently for the values of the Western Enlightenment against its motley army of enemies.
Born in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Nemtsov began as an atomic physicist but rose to prominence in the early 1990s as the reformist governor of Nizhny Novgorod province. President Boris Yeltsin took a liking to him and brought him to Moscow. “What a stubborn nature,” he wrote of Nemtsov. “Reminds me of myself.” Nemtsov was the first person Yeltsin anointed as his political successor. (Unfortunately, he was not the last.)
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