The Tragic Killing of Russian Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, last month, while many of us were working late to prevent the shutdown of our own Department of Homeland Security, a tragedy occurred in Moscow.
Boris Nemtsov, famed leader of Russia's opposition, was fatally shot four times in the back near St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. He was 55 years old. That night the fateful image of his body lying dead, on a bridge, facing the Kremlin, sent shivers across our world.

Shivers of sorrow. Shivers of anger. Shivers of cold remembrance of a place with no room for real liberty. No free speech. No tolerance for contrary opinions. No experience of what it means to live in an open society.

Russia is a nation that spans eleven time zones. It holds enough nuclear arms to obliterate life on Earth. How sad that such a nation is still unsafe for a peaceful advocate of freedom and representative governance.

Boris Nemtsov was killed just hours before a non-violent demonstration he was preparing to lead, protesting Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. What courage he showed in speaking for Ukraine, a young and energetic nation seeking peace and opportunity for its people. Ukraine is a sister to Russia and has not deserved the brutality that Russia has heaped upon her over the past year. During that short span, more than 6,000 people have died in the fight for an independent Ukraine.

Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister of Russia, a vice premier, fought every day for a more open society in his home country. He championed reform ever since the collapse of the old Soviet order twenty years ago. It was a valiant, if often lonely, struggle against a vast and oppressive totalitarian state. More and more, he must have felt the creeping shadow of his own mortality due to the danger in which he placed himself.

Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by cowards lurking in the shadows as he crossed a bridge in front of the Kremlin. The murderers, driven to such a craven and despicable act, were too small and too afraid to let his voice rise.

As I read the news of his tragic fate, I see the first threads of a history that will hold him up as a leader of unparalleled courage and unprecedented faith in his people. This is remarkable in the face of one of the most persistent tyrannies in the world.

Boris Nemtsov's life is prophetic, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others who have suffered to move Russia out of its historical imprisonment of liberty.

No part of our world has suffered more in the last century than Russia and the subjugated Soviet territories, as Dr. Timothy Snyder recounts in his extraordinary book "Bloodlands.''

In the middle of Europe in the middle of the 20th century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some 14 million people ..... all victims of murderous policy rather than casualties of war.

Yet not a single one of the 14 million murdered was a soldier on active duty. Most were women, children, and the aged; none were bearing weapons; many had been stripped of their possessions, including their clothes.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation a ``merciless devastation of civilian lives and infrastructure.''

His report points out that heavy weaponry and foreign fighters continue to pour in from Russia and that the conflict has ``dramatically deteriorated'' in the past two months.
In 2010 Nemtsov founded the Coalition for Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption, a party notable not only for its ambitious name but also because it was refused registration as a party by the Kremlin. In recent years, as a leader of the Russian opposition, Nemtsov had written several highly credible reports exposing corruption at the highest levels of the Russian government.

Our own Gettysburg Address, one of the most revered statements in American history, says, in part, ``that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.''

This is a message I now commend to the people of Russia: let the sacrifice of Boris Nemtsov inspire your own devotion to the cause of freedom.

Because of Boris Nemtsov, millions inside Russia can imagine liberty, a more democratic society, and a life better than the one now permitted to them. Ordinary citizens can make that life for themselves if they are only allowed real representative governance. Nemtsov strove to give every Russian a chance at that better life, even from inside the belly of a frozen whale. We honor his ideals and his sacrifice.

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