- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Natalia Pelevina
Natalia Pelevina
Russian Political Opposition Activist
Biography
Born in Moscow, Natalia moved to London, as a child, on the brink of the Soviet Union’s collapse. After receiving BA in Art History, she ventured into writing. Her screenplays were optioned by American production companies, while “I Plead Guilty”, a play based on the events of the Moscow theatre siege, was staged on both sides of the Atlantic, in London, New York and Washington DC, and was banned in Russia.
In 2012 she moved back to Russia to fight Putin’s increasingly vile and dangerous regime. She worked with Alexey Navalny on anti-corruption cases, as well his campaign for the Mayor of Moscow; co-founded a political party and helped put together a wide oppositional coalition. Constant surveillance, smear campaign on state television and criminal prosecutions on made up charges followed. After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine Natalia stood outside Kremlin with a Ukrainian flag, was arrested but later released.
Currently based in Latvia, Natalia is a Council Member of the Free Russia Forum, founded by Garry Kasparov, a Regional Secretary for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the World Liberty Congress and is working on a Transitional Justice for Russia project. The screenings of her documentary film “Borderline” about the war in Ukraine are taking place in Europe and will be moving to the US in the spring.
Seminars
“Hope, Deceit & Frozen Dreams: My Life as a Russian Opposition Leader”
Natalia Pelevina’s life reads like a modern thriller. A contemporary of Boris Nemtsov – who was assassinated in 2015 while she was working with him – and Alexei Navalny – the Russian opposition leader who died last year – Pelevina has uncovered corruption and terrorist attacks, organized political campaigns and protests and created performance and visual protest art. She and her peers have faced prosecution, smear campaigns, imprisonment and even death. What have been the hard lessons of the life of opposition? Now in exile abroad – she has been given “foreign agent” status by the Russian authorities – Pelevina continues her art and work, volunteers at the Ukrainian refugee center and continues to believe “this page of history will too be turned.”
Fellows seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
Let’s talk about how we got here. For Russia, the new century began with a lot of hope and significant reforms but also the first warning signs in my home country. Putin’s first term was promising. Many vital reforms were initiated, and the relationship with the West was going strong, but warning signs flashed. Putin used two major terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan to begin to tighten his grip. The war with Georgia; ensuing years of power grabs and protests; freedoms disappearing, propaganda taking over; President Obama’s failed “reset” with Russia; and, finally, the dawn of the Tru-Tin era. We’ll take a journey through the time of many hopes and just as many illusions, missed opportunities, dissent and danger.
How real electoral fraud sparked large-scale protests. I will give you my first-hand account of the Bolotnaya square protest, which I helped organize, and which resulted in a major clash with the police. Political prosecutions followed. “Pussy Riot” members were jailed. Dissent and resistance peaked; Crimea was annexed, and sanctions began to pile on; Putin ordered for imported goods to be replaced with the domestic product; and we all watched Russian tractors destroy French ham and Polish apples. In the same but seemingly parallel reality, we were in for the fight of our lives.
When Boris Nemtsov was murdered on a Moscow bridge, Mikhail Kasyanov and I were sitting at a cafe discussing how to help Boris with a report he was preparing on Russia's proxy war in Ukraine. He got the first call, and 20 minutes later, we were standing near Boris's body. Political assassinations are the ultimate tool of the Putin Kremlin, from those of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko, which shocked the world, as did the death of Sergei Magnitsky in one of Moscow’s prisons. The poisoning in England’s Salisbury of Sergei Skripal and his daughter with Novichok nerve agent by Petrov and Boshirov – in reality GRU’s Mishkin and Chepiga - made it clear – Russian secret services operate globally and in the most blatant manner.
Special Guest (via Zoom): Yuri Felshtinsky, Russian-American Historian & Co-Author of “Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within"
There are many ways to make the lives of dissenters unbearable. How about a spy camera in a private home – in my bedroom wall. I am a survivor of a revenge sex tape ordered by Putin. Let me tell you more about terrorism in Russia and, from my own experience, the FSB methods used against the opposition – surveillance, honey traps, propaganda techniques – and the sort of smearing I personally faced by the government.
From anti-corruption movement to anti-regime campaign; why the fight against corruption did not resonate enough and ultimately did not bring enough people on board to fight Putin’s tyranny.
On the back of Moscow’s anti-government protests, Alexei Navalny’s western-style campaign for the Mayor of Moscow proved to be a real hit. It showed incredible results and led to his 2018 presidential campaign, which took him all over Russia, but his name never appeared on the ballot. Two years later, Alexei was poisoned with Novichok; after he survived that, he was put in prison, where he later died. What do we take from his legacy?
I wrote “In Your Hands,” a play based on the events of the Moscow theater hostage crisis which was first staged in North London. It had a premiere at the Russian Dramatic Theatre but was banned after its opening night performance, which was chronicled widely by the international press. My play “I Plead Guilty” had its New York premiere in May, 2011 at Gene Frankel theatre. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I am currently working on a YouTube show mocking Putin and putting dents into his mighty and invincible image. We will talk about Protest Art - from drama to political satire to street art - as a form of awakening and resistance.
Special Guest (via Zoom): Olga Borisova, Member of Pussy Riot
Let’s return to the background of the earlier war in Eastern Ukraine that erupted between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, leading to the shooting down of the MH-17 aircraft with 298 on board by Russia-backed militants. The opposition led tens of thousands of Russians in the pro-Ukraine protests, but with little effect. Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election brought Putin further joy, yet very few people in Russia believed Putin would invade Ukraine. Almost three years in, it is clear that history will not call this “Putin’s war”. It will go down in history books as “Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Unprovoked, brutal, criminal war, still with no end in sight.
Similarities? A Bromance? Or a potential for a fall out? Russians were celebrating Trump’s win in 2016, and the corks were flying all over Moscow. This time around, things are a little different. Oligarchy, imperialistic ambitions, prosecution of the opposition: could Trump be modeling himself on Putin? We will see Donald Trump through the prism of Russian propaganda; discuss scenarios for the next four years; and the global context, authoritarianism and far-right movement on the rise. What we can do to bring about a better future.