Russian dissident film screened at Hoover

 

Lyubov Sobol at the Hoover Institute, June 24, 2025/By Patricia Leslie

Lyubov Sobol is a human rights activist, a former attorney for Alexei Navalny (1976-2024), and a Russian native forced to flee her native country to avoid another prosecution and likely imprisonment.

She and filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya were at the D.C. office of the Hoover Institute last week for the presentation of Lyuba's Hope, a film about Sobol's life as a dissident in Russia. 

Her hope is that Russia will become a democracy.

Sobol has been arrested multiple times for her opposition to Putin and her campaign for freedom in Russia.

The film opens with the police banging on the door of her residence before they barge in to take her away again, the first of her many clashes with the Russian gestapo.

A 2021 article in the New Yorker says that at one time, Sobol was sentenced to her home every night and banned from using the internet or telephone, accused of aiding Navalny.  

She had to wear an electronic ankle monitor and was prevented from running for public office, declared ineligible by the government. She notably conducted an investigation of Yevgeny Prigozhin* and found that his company poisoned Moscow kindergarteners with tainted food. 

Navalny and Sobol are shown together in several clips; at age 22, she was his organization's first attorney and grew to become Russia's' second most popular public opposition leader.

In 2019 the BBC named Sobol to its Leadership category on its list of 100 "inspiring and influential women from around the world." 

Her efforts to fight for democracy in Russia were honored by a 2019 Sergei Magnitsky Award.

Marianna Yarovskaya, left, and Lyubov Sobol at the Hoover Institute, June 24, 2025/By Patricia Leslie

About 60 came to see the film and packed the Hoover's D.C. office. I sat beside a Swedish economist who, within 60 seconds of greeting me, said that the U.S. today reminds him of 1933 when Hitler rose to power. He said his specialties are the economies of Russia and Ukraine.

Hoover is a conservative think tank, associated with Stanford University and founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover before he became president. 

Some of its alums include Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Newt Gingrich. Condoleezza Rice is the director. Its first honorary fellow, named in 1975, was Ronald Reagan.

Sobol, now 37, enjoys her life now in Estonia, but it is not home which, I gathered from the film, is where she longs to be. 

During the screening I was constantly taken aback by her bravery, confidence and determination, none wavering in the Putin onslaught of her rights.  She, driven by her belief that Putin is wrong for Russia, wrong for the world.

The film's producer and Hoover Fellow, Paul Gregory, worked with Yarovskaya on the documentary film, Women of the Gulag, which was short-listed for the 2019 Academy Awards.  

*Prigozhin was the owner of the private military company, Wagner, before Putin had him killed in an airplane crash in 2023. His death resulted from the rebellion he led due to disagreements with Putin and Putin's regime over perceived mismanagement of Russia's campaign in the war for Ukraine.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Pre-Ossoff at Hoover Institute

 From left, Bill Kristol, Jeff Bell, and Spencer Abraham at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Progressives have "a sense of inevitability," said Jeff Bell at "Political Parties in America: Trends and Truths in the Trump Era," a half-day event last Monday at the Hoover Institute. 

The day before the special election in Georgia (won by the Republican Karen Handel who surprised most with a larger-than-expected victory over Democrat Jon Ossoff, 51.9% v. 48.1%), politicos gathered for discussion, moderated by Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the Weekly Standard.

  From left, Jeff Bell and Spencer Abraham at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Overall, the tone throughout the afternoon was moderate; President Trump's name was not mentioned as much as anticipated in a session filled with much presidential election history.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the afternoon came from Morris Fiorina, a Stanford University political science professor who addressed the audience as one of three participants on "Party and Faction, In Principle and Practice" with Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University professor of government, and James Ceaser, University of Virginia professor of politics, all Hoover senior fellows.

  From left, Doug Sosnik and Neera Tanden at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Fiorina presented charts and documentation on past presidential elections, information he gleaned from The Economist, he said. (His presentation would make a great program for political groups.)

Trump and Hillary Clinton were badly flawed, highly unpopular candidates, and Fiorina presented graphs to support his statements.  The only female voting segment Hillary Clinton won were women with post-graduate degrees. 

"Part of Trump's appeal was nobody knew where he was," Fiorina said. "He talked out of both sides of his mouth."

  Professor Harvey Mansfield at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The "situation is very dicey for each party" said Jeff Bell, former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and New Jersey Republican senatorial candidate, speaking on an earlier panel "The Republican Party Today" where he was joined by  Spencer Abraham, the last Republican U.S. Senator from Michigan (1995-2001) and former Secretary of Energy under President George W. Bush.

  Professor Morris Fiorina at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

With the exception of Fiorina's remarks, Bell's and Abraham's discussion was the most riveting of the afternoon, and being first on the program helped.
     
Bell said there is "mutual suspicion between the [Republican] base and party elites," description heard throughout the day.

Senator Abraham may no longer be in the Senate, but he stays close to Michigan voters. 

Parties now are basically "data collection centers," which have become "a library of sorts," he said. "Elected officials are not all that happy with the brand.  The base is unhappy with the failure [of party leaders] to fight hard."

  Professor James Ceaser at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Abraham said that people "were much more vocally supportive of their president" when he was George H. (?) Bush and Bill Clinton.

On the other hand, "when the going gets tough," said Bell, "Republicans bail out." When Bush was "savaged," especially in his second term, the president's response was to ignore the attacks, unlike Trump who "is going in the opposite extreme defending himself" on everything.

From left, James Ceaser, Morris Fiorina, Bill Kristol, and Harvey Mansfield at the Hoover Institute/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Abraham said Trump's condescension towards the establishment is obvious. 

Bell said that the last Gallup poll before the 2016 election revealed Trump's positive rating at 34% and, negative, 62% (not too different from the CBS poll released June 20, 2017: 36% positive, 57%, negative).

Kristol noted the "huge gap" in turnout of Democrats versus Republicans in the June 13 Virginia gubernatorial primary.   

Bell thinks Republican "Ed Gillespie has a pretty good chance" to win the Virginia governor's race in November, and if the Democrats make Trump's impeachment an issue, "it's not all bad for Trump," an opinion Kristol shares.

Abraham said there were really four parties represented in last year's election: Two each for the Democrats and Republicans.  

Now there's a much greater chance other parties will emerge outside the mainstream, Bell said.  

He mentioned last month's French vote as an example (?). Abraham said Republicans feared Trump would run as an independent. Bernie Sanders was the insurgent candidate versus the establishment on the Democratic side, and "Sanders's wing" is gaining momentum.

Bell said: "The conservative movement didn't keep its finger on the electorate  very well.  Right now it's more about the progressive movement," while "the conservatives can't figure out what to do with themselves."

Abraham noted last year Trump carried 65% of the vote in many of Michigan's "old industrial cities" (Battle Creek, Port Huron, Monroe were some he named). 

"The white working class," he said, has a "sense of hopelessness about themselves, their children and their futures" which the people in Washington "not only don't get," but "they don't take it seriously." 

Answering a question from a member of the audience, Bell described a "disconnect between people who run the parties and the electorate."

For another questioner, Abraham thinks" a more confrontational Republican party is likely to emerge here," which will make Republicans uncomfortable, being averse to conflict.

With the exception of pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump's strength is his foreign policy, Bell said.

On the second panel were Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress (often called a "left-leaning think tank") and Doug Sosnik, former counselor to President Bill Clinton who has also worked for Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004, and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). 

Tanden said the Democrats are " incredibly unified...extremely united with no leader in sight."  (Later, she named Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri as rising Democratic stars.  Someone during the day mentioned New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.) 

Sosnik said since 1972 the Democrats have moved further left, will move further left for next year's congressional races and will move even further left for the 2020 presidential campaign.

Political activism is the "greatest" Tanden has seen "in my lifetime." Leaders are not leading, they are following. Sosnik agreed he has never seen "this energy" either. The anti-Trump effect is having a positive benefit for the Democrats, but Democrats have to be convinced to show their "level of anger" by voting next year, said Sosnik.

The "president's problems impact his ability to govern," Sosnik said, and said opponents came out "like rabid dogs" to attack Bill Clinton when he was impeached in 1999. (Senator Abraham voted to convict him.)  

Kristol said that Trump should ignore diversions, but he does not.

Sosnik: "I thought [Trump] would become 'normalized'" once he took office, but "he's not." ("I used  to worry about it; now, I don't.") Trump is 71 and is not going to reinvent himself, Sosnik said.

After President Richard Nixon resigned and President Gerald Ford pardoned him, Kristol said it didn't take long for the matter to fade, and Ford "almost won" the 1976 election. (Jimmy Carter won with 50.08% of the votes and 297 electoral votes, and Ford drew 48.02% and 240 electoral votes.) Sosnik said with the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson knew it would be the end of the Democratic Party as it was known then.

Tanden predicted nontraditional candidates will be running the U.S. 15 to 20 years from now, "not the suits in Washington."

Sosnik said that Bernie Sanders and Trump had more in common than perceived.

Sosnik said that Trump has "squandered" the most valuable time of his presidency, the first six months.  "He had no purpose to govern.  He had no theory, no organizing principle. He ran to win."

Tanden said  governing is harder work than running a race, and at the end of the day, the question remains:  Does Trump improve the lives of Americans?

About 50 attended.  A reception followed with the best broiled, spiced shrimp ever to fire up voters.

patricialesli@gmail.com