Putin and his despotism look secure. His opponents are dead or dispersed, and he sits unchallenged on his throne in the Kremlin, the master of Russia.
His greatest opponent, Alexey Navalny, was killed by the Russian state — through malevolence or neglect — while in custody in January. Boris Nemtsov, a leading challenger to Vladimir Putin, was assassinated as he walked near the Kremlin in 2015. Dozens of other critics or potential opponents to Putin have died mysteriously since he took control in 2000.
What is left? As in communist times, what’s left are words and ideas, the concept advanced by the (Czech) Václav Havel of “living in truth” by simply staying true to oneself and living life as though the authoritarian state did not exist.
Navalny understood the power of the word and perhaps also of martyrdom. Poisoned by Putin’s GRU agents in 2020, he was saved by doctors in Germany but returned to his homeland four months later with his wife, Yulia. Transferred to ever-more remote and inhospitable prisons, often enduring solitary confinement, Navalny nonetheless managed to write in notebooks and on scraps of paper. These fragments are now published in Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir (Knopf, October 2024). An E-book version in Russian is also available.
This tells us that, against the odds, very good and courageous people do exist, but their impact may be smothered, at least for the foreseeable future.
Patriot shows one man’s journey from fighting a dictatorship until his own death. He kept his sense of humor, even joking with a judge a day before he died — probably killed on orders from on high. The details of any autopsy have not been revealed.
Why did Navalny go back? Yulia explained that he wanted to be with his supporters, and, through his courage and his bravery, to show people that there is no need to be afraid of Russia’s dictator. Navalny’s Christian faith sustained him to the end. If you honestly believe, he wrote, what else is there to worry about?
“Having spent my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone exactly the same thing I shouted to those who gathered outside the court when the guards were taking me off to the police truck: Don’t be afraid of anything,” Navalny wrote in January 2022.
“This is our country and it’s the only one we have. Why live your whole life in fear, even being robbed in the process, if everything can be arranged differently and more justly?” he wrote. “The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites, that we will surrender without a fight, voluntarily, our own future and the future of our children.”
After Navalny’s death, the US, European Union, and UK announced new sanctions against Russia. These included freezing the assets of six prison bosses who ran the Arctic Circle penal colony. Yulia calls the reaction to his death by the international community “a joke” and urges them to be “a little less afraid” of Putin.
Navalny helps us anticipate what could happen anywhere. His life reminds us that good and courageous people do exist. That those who fight for noble causes against huge obstacles are not suckers, as their detractors say. They are visionaries who change the world, however long that takes.
Walter Clemens is Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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