Alexey Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya and two of his allies wrote recently to Prime Minister Mark Carney to ask for his support in granting asylum for Russians in the U.S. who are in danger of deportation.RALF HIRSCHBERGER/AFP/Getty Images
Jeremy Kinsman is a distinguished fellow of the Canadian International Council.
For believers in democracy and basic human rights, the 1990s in Russia were initially a heady and exciting time. The sense of mission was not ideological or geostrategic, but humanistic, rooted in what Czech dissident and eventual president Vaclav Havel called the “venerable practice of international solidarity” with those who yearned for freedom of speech and basic human rights in countries that smothered them.
Only a few years earlier, Mikhail Gorbachev had upended the authoritarian grip of the Communist Party over every facet of Soviet life. In 1992, after the USSR broke up into 15 republics, Russia became a huge laboratory for democratic and economic transformation. For those of us fortunate enough to be there in support of Russia’s efforts, it was a time that was initially exhilarating.
But it became increasingly dispiriting as the evidence accumulated of the extent of behavioural challenges facing the Russian people unaccustomed to individual agency. The dismantling of the Soviet-style economy, with the support of Western economists who unthinkingly preached “shock therapy,” caused what David Remnick termed “the wreckage of everyday life.” Corruption ran amok.
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Rule by Soviet law was effaced to the advantage of profiteers. Corruption eroded confidence that the arc of history was bending in the right direction. As American legal scholar Thomas Carothers remarked, the rule of law is formed less by statutes and courts than by what’s in the heads of the people. Faced with abrupt uncertainty, people then turned away from “democrats.”
I was Canada’s ambassador to Russia at that time. Our mission had become primarily to support Russian democratic and economic transformation, along with co-operation in what was the first global environment in 300 years without major strategic rivalries. Initially, we overrelied on supporting the Russian government, without realizing that institutions and democratic elections represent only scaffolding. The actual building blocks for democracy reside in an active civil society. It takes time, practice, and support to emerge and take effect.
When Vladimir Putin emerged in 2000 as the new and vigorous President, he committed initially to the democratic path as he promised to restore stability in Russia. There is little truth to the adage that Russian DNA creates longing for a strong czar – “Russia loves to feel the whip,” Empress Alexandra Feodorovna once wrote to her husband Tsar Nicholas. The terribly harsh Soviet and Russian 20th century had, however, traumatized citizens, even in subsequent generations.
But over time, it became clear that Mr. Putin’s real impulses were autocratic. As stability returned, and a civil society seeking agency emerged, Mr. Putin viewed it as an adversary, a threat to the strong autocratic regime he sought.
A new generation of Russian democrats tried to re-engage Russians in protecting civil liberties. Their leader became Alexey Navalny. His story of opposition to one-man rule was heroic, imaginative, organizationally effective, and fatal, as we know. From the massed hundreds of thousands of protesters against rigged elections and trampled freedoms, he ended his life in cruel isolation, a martyr to tyranny.
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Mr. Putin, imbued with right-wing nationalist ideology and illiberal repression, recreated the police state to persecute dissenters, whose numbers vaulted with Russia’s predatory invasion of Ukraine. A million Russian democrats fled.
Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and two of his allies only recently released from prison in an exchange for prisoners in the West, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Ilya Yashin, wrote recently to Prime Minister Mark Carney. These dissidents, who believe in the principles that Canadians had extolled in Russia, sought Mr. Carney’s support in granting asylum for Russians in the U.S. who are in danger of deportation. The Trump administration’s skepticism toward anti-war and opposition-minded Russians already has led many to be sent back to Russia.
The three urged Canada to adopt a decision to grant asylum to Russian dissidents in the United States. They perceive, it seems, that Canada is now the “other North America”– still able to adopt principled humanist positions.
Are we? There has been no public response from Mr. Carney, even if only to acknowledge the issue. Instead, a communications officer from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada poured cold water on the request, saying that the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement would prevent most asylum seekers who pass through the U.S. from claiming protection in Canada.
It is amazing that the tone-deaf Ottawa bureaucracy could read this moment so wrong. Canada-U.S. agreements are clearly not what they were. But Canada’s economic difficulties with the U.S. cannot be impediments to our principles of solidarity and right and wrong. We don’t need a grand declaration to encourage asylum seekers to come. We just need to arrange asylum for democrats and humanists who merit safety among people they considered friends.