Vladimir Kara-Murza is vice chairman of Open Russia, a Russian pro-democracy movement, and chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. He was a long-time colleague of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Kara-Murza is a former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian State Duma. He has testified on Russian affairs before parliaments in Europe and North America and played a key role in the passage of the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 US law that imposed targeted sanctions on Russian human rights violators. Kara-Murza is the author of Reform or Revolution (Moscow 2011) and a contributor to Russia’s Choices: The Duma Elections and After (London 2003), Russian Liberalism: Ideas and People (Moscow 2007), Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law (London 2013), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Stuttgart 2018). He writes regular commentary for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, World Affairs, and other periodicals, and has previously worked as a journalist for Russian broadcast and print media, including Ekho Moskvy and Kommersant. Kara-Murza directed two documentary films, They Chose Freedom (on the dissident movement in the USSR) and Nemtsov (on the life of Boris Nemtsov). Twice, in 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned with an unknown substance and left in a coma; the murder attempts were widely viewed as politically motivated. He is a recipient of the Magnitsky Human Rights Award and the Sakharov Prize for Journalism as an Act of Conscience. Kara-Murza holds an M.A. (Cantab.) in History from Cambridge. He is married, with three children.
RSVP required to events@liberal.ola.org by Tuesday, February 6
Photo ID required for entry to the Main Legislative Building
