Editor’s note: Daniel Triesman is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author with Sergei Guliyev.Spin Dictators: The Transformation of Tyranny in the 21st Century” The views expressed in this commentary are his own.See more opinion On CNN.
CNN
—
People asked Alexei Navalny why he chose to take the risk of returning to Russia in 2021 after being poisoned and nearly dying with a rare nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union. Rather than return home where he would almost certainly be imprisoned, he could have stayed abroad and led a resistance movement against Putin from Western countries.
Provided by Daniel Triesman
Daniel Triesman
His answer was simple. “Russia is my country and Moscow is my city. I miss them.” Russian prison authorities announced on Friday and Navalny’s spokesman confirmed on Saturday. His death shows that President Putin has dragged this country into the depths of despicability.
During his brave and all-too-short life, Mr. Navalny became a symbol of hope for younger generations of his fellow countrymen. Unassuming, witty and often self-deprecating, he had a style and presence that inspired a wide range of followers.
His team’s drone footage of Kremlin insiders’ pleasure palaces has made it impossible for anyone to deny accusations of corruption at the core of the regime. (With the exception of Kremlin spokesmen, who dismissed Mr. Navalny’s claims as “propaganda rantings” and “a bunch of nonsense.”) Mr. Navalny has led many large-scale protests against corruption.
He never gave up his vision of what he called “the beautiful Russia of the future.”
Putin, by contrast, seems fixated on a partially imagined Russia past. As a recent interview with Tucker Carlson showed, the Russian president’s recent interest lies in the medieval exploits of Yaroslav the Wise and various Viking chieftains.
He shows little concern for the millions of young Russians whose lives have been torn apart by the Kremlin’s brutal power struggles. Many are now in exile or fear being drafted to serve on the Ukrainian front. On Friday, hundreds of people bravely resisted police and laid flowers at monuments honoring Navalny and commemorating victims of past crackdowns.
For years, the Kremlin’s treatment of Mr. Navalny has followed the dark development of Putin’s regime. At first, insiders tried to ignore or ridicule him. President Putin did everything he could to avoid mentioning his name in public.
Rather than attacking Mr. Navalny as a political rival, authorities promoted a fabricated image of Mr. Navalny as a petty fraudster. In the criminal case, he was charged with defrauding a cosmetics company and, almost comically, illegally hunting elk.
At one point, prosecutors intervened to keep Navalny in line. outside of prison. Instead, they used revolving door detention lasting two to three weeks at a time to isolate him when protests were scheduled.
But the approach has since hardened, as Putin has become more bellicose and dependent on his former security service colleagues. In 2020, CNN reported that Federal Security Service (FSB) agents poisoned Navalny by planting the nerve agent Novichok in his underwear. (Putin has denied that the FSB was involved, saying that if its agents had wanted to poison the activists, they “probably would have done it.”) After Mr. Navalny survived and returned to Russia, the authorities ordered a series of more serious Numerous prosecutions were filed. The latest verdict sentenced him to 19 years in prison for “extremism.”
Navalny’s death will leave a gaping hole at the heart of Russia’s already fragmented opposition movement, scattered around the world. That might encourage remaining anti-Putin activists to unite, but that is unlikely.
There are growing doubts in Russia about the presidential election scheduled for mid-March. Navalny had called on Russians to vote strategically in favor of candidates other than Putin. His death could amplify that message.
The Kremlin already seems shaken by the unexpected popularity of liberal politician and war commentator Boris Nadezhdin. Although initially disinterested in his candidacy, authorities recently blocked Nadezhdin’s candidacy.
The official election results are almost certain to show a resounding victory for President Putin. But the greater the fraud necessary to achieve his victory, the harder it will be to hide and the greater the risk of public outrage. In 2011, blatant vote rigging in Moscow sparked a wave of mass protests.
Navalny’s death is a public affront to Western leaders who have called for Russia to respect human rights. President Joe Biden warned Putin of the “catastrophic” consequences if an activist died in prison in 2021. On Friday, he said “President Putin and his thugs” were responsible for his death, without saying whether the U.S. would take further action.
The first step would be to commit to holding all those involved in Mr. Navalny’s persecution, from Kremlin aides to prison guards, to account under international and humanitarian law. After another brave Russian, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, died in one of Putin’s prisons in 2009, the United States and Europe passed laws to sanction the perpetrators. This law should be enforced and expanded. At the same time, Western governments must do everything in their power to help Westerners who are wrongfully imprisoned in Russia.
Western leaders must publicly demonstrate their commitment to liberal values by attending memorial services for Navalny around the world. As with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, now is the time to show unity. At a time when political cynicism is rampant, people who believe in democracy and human rights need to stand up and be counted.
Get our free weekly newsletter
In the United States, the biggest compliment to Mr. Navalny would be for House Republicans to quickly pass much-needed aid to help Ukraine continue its fight against the Russian dictator. President Biden said in remarks Friday that the failure to deliver supplies to Ukraine will go down in the pages of history and urged Congress to act quickly: “We must help now.”
For a “beautiful Russia of the future” to emerge in the coming years, President Putin must lose the war he started. Mr. Navalny understood this. A year ago, while serving his sentence, Navalny called on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine and pay reparations. compensation —Post from his Twitter account. Mr. Navalny wrote that Putin wanted to “make the entire Russian population his accomplices,” but a lack of volunteers forced him to rely on convicts.
Mr. Navalny’s example and ultimate sacrifice remind us that there have always been, and still are, Russians who believe in decency and freedom for all. Now, more than ever, we need to show them they are not alone.