The most appropriate epitaph after the judicial – and, most likely, operational – murder of Navalny by the Putin regime was compiled by the weekly The Economist: “Fear and greed rule the Russian regime. The oppositionist (Navalny) hit both“. In other words, the political philosophy of the Kremlin regime is that any person can be brought into order by terror or bribery. I have no doubt that many Romanians, brought up in the barracks cynicism of Kausian securitism, fully agree with this. Navalny does not agreed

Indeed, that is why he returned to Russia after the poisoning in 2020: because he could not remain in the safety of exile in the West and at the same time preach to Russians, a passive population frightened by the regime, not to be afraid and fight for freedom. Rhetoric of compromised the regime was exactly like this and remains like this: everyone who opposes the Kremlin is anti-Russian and sold to the Americans, the British, Soros and Rockefeller. And the problem is that a large part of Russian society believes in these things, even the part that does not necessarily like Putin. 25% of Russians have seen the famous online video of Putin’s Black Sea palace, but only about 20% still trust Navalny as a potential leader, according to some polls. And this was before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which made the situation even more complicated.

In other words, Navalny attacked the regime with an extremely popular topic – the corruption and insatiable greed of the elite gathered around Putin, which he talks about Economist – and he defended himself with an equally well-rooted theme of Russian-Soviet popular culture: the homeland under siege by enemies from the West and the 5th column from the inside. Or, speaking of Great Russian conspiratorial patriotism, Navalny decided not to fight Putin and his people, but from time to time to try to push them away from the electorate, hence the accusation that he himself is a nationalist. Perhaps the strategy of not opening many fronts at once in the war with Putin had its justifications, especially when you are an oppressed political minority without access to the media, but the results were inconclusive and cast a shadow over Navalny’s political career. The balance looks like this.

minuses

• He was an energetic, action-oriented guy who was educated in second-hand shops like Spiru and was less exposed to the good world in his youth, which made him walk the streets many times in the beginning of his public career. He had an uncanny ability to educate himself and learn from those who were smarter than him later, but although he eventually let go of his teenage terror and many of his toxic views, he did not always return to the unacceptable statements of the past to clarify things. , first of all, he didn’t remove them from Youtube.
• He made controversial gestures, especially in the early years of political activism, such as statements with racist undertones towards the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia; he later reasoned that he was actually fighting fascism with anti-immigration campaigns in Russia’s big cities.
• He participated in two or three “Marches of the Russians,” large street demonstrations in Moscow where ultranationalists usually display swastikas, which led to his expulsion from the liberal Yabloko party. This happened before 2010 and, as he suggests, after a conscious decision to dialogue and co-opt the cause of the nationalist youth. By the way, he was there together with Jew and Harvard political scientist Evgenia Albatz, who also marched with a Star of David on her chest (Navalny was widely criticized by nationalists at the time for appearing in public with ” kayak” is a derogatory term for Jewish women in anti-Semitic circles). In a dialogue with the Polish dissident Adam Michnik, he stated: “My idea is that we should communicate with the nationalists in order to re-educate them.” Whether he was naive at that moment, a realist or a hypocrite, God knows.
• He supported the brief war against Georgia in 2008, as did the vast majority of Russian public opinion; he later apologized for this position, as well as for his remarks against people from the Caucasus.
• He made ambiguous statements about the invasion of Crimea in 2014, such as – I am against this invasion in principle, but if it was done, then that’s it, we can’t return something, etc. This made it immediately suitable for attack from all sides: obviously, from the side of the Ukrainians; but also by the majority of Russian public opinion, which called him unpatriotic and sold to foreigners.

pluses

• He grew up in the civil-liberal party “Yabloko” (demonized not only in Russia, but also by the Western left) and considered Boris Nemtsov a kind of political role model.
• Almost everything that is toxic and controversial in Navalny’s statements is a decade or more old. Since then, he has developed in coherence of ideas and political abilities under the influence of outstanding advisers with whom he came into contact, such as Sergey Guriev (Science Po economist in Paris), Alexander Etkind (UE Florence) or Sergey Erofeev (Rutgers).
• Despite the fact that he continued to flirt with the idea of ​​a new referendum in Crimea, he stated directly in one place that Ukraine and Russia must respect the 1991 borders. About the war, he said before the court that “this is nonsense from Putin.” heads and that “it is based on lies.” “A madman dug his claws into Ukraine, and I don’t know what he wants to do with it.” In the last year of the war, while in an increasingly harsh prison in his native Russia, he became a fierce critic of Russian aggression in Ukraine and called for the Kremlin’s political leaders to be prosecuted for war crimes.
• He was a man of boundless courage who understood how important the power of example and direct commitment in civic-political activity is, which is rare in our region. In addition, he had charisma, communication skills and authority on the main topic he spoke about: the fight against corruption.
• All the more, he had credibility due to the fact that he was never part of the official political class of Russia, he did not kiss rings in the Kremlin to have positions in the system – and, above all, he was not security forces, that is, part of the security system, special services and their business cover. This is a big deal and one of the reasons why the current Russian elite could not allow him to power. (But what are we talking about Russia when you see how in Romania access to leadership positions and influence is conditioned by official favors, diplomas from institutions with epaulettes, etc.).

Obviously, the propaganda machine of the Kremlin strategically played with these elements of his biography. At home, he was portrayed as a foreigner sold to the globalist cabal (or “Ukrainian fascists”), so his name could not be mentioned on TV channels (he was a “Berlin patient”). But abroad, the same propaganda machine happily picked up and intensified the criticism of the Great Russian nationalist-racist Navalny from the newspaper Jacobin, or from commentators with Thiermondist views, such as Anatole Lieven, or from American academia, all justified by his old statements, carelessly left unexplained. The main triumph was, of course, in 2021, when Amnesty International decided after a controversial report… Read the rest of the article at Contributors.ro