This section has been updated to reflect recent developments.
For most of the 12 years or so that Alexei Navalny campaigned against President Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russian president tried in every possible way to silence him, including assassination. Still, he tried to avoid naming his Abu. But when the news that Mr. Navalny had died in a remote forced labor camp in the north was published on Russia’s official news site, Mr. Putin, who was visiting the city of Chelyabinsk, was “notified”. It contained details.
Many official news outlets also reported reactions from Western officials and discussions in the Russian parliament that the United States and its European allies were likely to use Navalny’s death to possibly impose additional sanctions. Ta.
While this treatment of Navalny’s death is normally carried with the weight of a national crisis, there is a possibility that Navalny could be discredited by calling him nothing more than a fraud or a terrorist, extremist or Nazi. This goes against the government’s pretense that there is. It was hinted at trumped-up charges that sent him to a labor camp. Instead, the official response inadvertently confirmed what Mr. Putin was trying so hard to hide: that Mr. Navalny’s persistent accusations of corruption and mismanagement represent a serious political challenge to Mr. Putin’s dictatorial regime. Ta. And Navalny could become even more dangerous if he dies.
Unlike the Kremlin’s Soviet predecessors, who were able to use universalist ideology to justify repression, Mr. Putin has fixed elections, bent courts to his will, and tolerated massive corruption while Personal governance had to be built on the illusion of democracy. Rather than criminalizing dissent as “anti-Soviet incitement and propaganda,” Putin has labeled principled opponents like Navalny with fabricated labels such as “foreign agents” and “terrorists.” must be used to fight.
What made Mr. Navalny so dangerous was that he defeated lies. And that could make him an even more powerful person, a martyr. This is a risk for the Kremlin just a month before national elections, which Mr. Putin hopes to portray as a fervent endorsement of his rule and public support for the war against Ukraine.
Navalny has condemned the invasion of Ukraine from the beginning. “This is a stupid war started by President Putin,” he told a Moscow court. Putin believed he could suppress opposition to the war by arresting or sending critics into exile. Many of those who opposed the war came from the urban intelligentsia rather than the rural masses, and they generally accepted Kremlin propaganda that blamed the war on U.S. conspiracies and a supposed threat from Ukraine. be proactive.
Navalny appealed to the resentment of ordinary Russians. His main target was corruption, especially the self-interest of Mr. Putin and his cronies. He used his common sense, humor, and courage, along with an organization that produced a series of sophisticated and entertaining videos.
In one case, designed to prove that the Kremlin was behind the poisoning, Navalny reportedly impersonated a Russian security official to extract information, which police It is an amazing feat of investigative reporting in a nation. Millions of people watched videos about the palace built for Mr. Putin and former president Dmitri Medvedev’s luxurious country mansion. His condemnation of the ruling United Russia Party as a “party of fraudsters and thieves” became an indelible slogan.
Mr. Navalny tried to run and called on his supporters to vote against Mr. Putin, but he is not a politician. He was originally a member of the opposition Yabloko party, but he left the party because he was willing to support any faction opposed to Mr. Putin, regardless of ideology.
He was a crusader against corruption, evil, meanness, and always against Mr. Putin. He has published a series of published answers to questions posed by Boris Akunin, a popular Russian mystery writer who currently lives in the UK and was recently ordered arrested in absentia by a Russian court for “justifying terrorism.” Some of them were revealed in the.
Navalny spoke about his faith in God and science, his love of literature and his love for Russia. His favorite book was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which he read when he was 10 or 11 years old.
Mr. Akunin asked what is the greatest root of evil. Navalny responded: “All that is required for the victory of evil is the inaction of good people.” And what will be most profitable? “Participating in the battle between good and neutral”
That was his belief, and it was impossible for him to stand by while evil spread. Russians understand this spiritual movement at every level. They made Russian writers and artists the most powerful opponents of authoritarians and dictators, echoing and responding to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s challenge to “live without relying on lies.”
But whereas Mr. Solzhenitsyn and Soviet-era dissidents fought regimes that denied freedom in the name of utopian ideology, Mr. Navalny’s fight was to use victory over communism to accumulate power and wealth. It was a battle against the forces. “I can’t stop myself from hating the people who sold me, pissed me off, and squandered the historic opportunity our country had in the early 1990s with such vitriol,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Putin and his cronies, many of them former KGB veterans, understood the threat Mr. Navalny posed. They silenced him or forced him into exile through constant petty arrests, harassment of his supporters, and an infamous murder attempt in Siberia in 2020 using a type of nerve agent, Novichok. worked hard for.
However, Navalny survived and returned to Russia the following year. Mr. Putin would likely send him to the forced labor camps where many of Russia’s greatest dissidents languish, knowing he might die there. He has been imprisoned since 2021 and was transferred last year to a remote and notoriously brutal camp known as “Polar Wolf” above the Arctic Circle.
Still, they continued to speak out through occasional visits from lawyers and through organizations and family members. Navalny’s website is running a campaign to refute claims that the results of next month’s Russian presidential election should be seen as popular support for Putin’s rule. “Let’s defeat his plan so that no one is interested in the fabricated results of March 17th. But let’s make sure that all Russians see and understand that the will of the majority is for Putin to step down.” Let’s do it,” he called.
It is too early to gauge the direct impact of Navalny’s death. Much of the organized opposition to Mr. Putin has been suppressed through arrests and people fleeing the country. But the emergence of new martyrs will give new force to the questions and accusations raised by Mr. Navalny, making it even more difficult for Mr. Putin to maintain the myth that he is in the service of Russia’s greatness. .
Mr. Navalny is not afraid of suffering and chooses to fight for what he believes in. “I believe in true love,” he told Akunin. “I believe that Russia will be happy and free. And I do not believe in death.”