Alexei Navalny

By Tamara Eidelman

Writing about Navalny today is unbelievably painful.

And not just because losing him feels like losing someone very dear to you, or like you’ve lost an arm, or as if a terrifying chasm is opening around you.

It feels like losing the future.

For me, Navalny embodied Russia’s development.

The son of a military officer who grew up on a military base not far from Moscow, Navalny came of age in the 1990s. The ambitious among his generation became unscrupulous millionaires, rappers, avant-garde artists, or self-seeking politicians. These were the people who could see the new possibilities and had a sense of their own powers. And Navalny himself tried his hand at a number of professions: business, law, politics.

But then he forged his own path.

The military is one of society’s most conservative segments. The son of a Red Army officer was supposed to assiduously serve the regime. So how did Anatoly and Lyudmila Navalny manage to raise a troublemaker? And, considering Alexei’s younger brother Oleg’s wisecracking and tenacity, two troublemakers?

Another amazing thing is how several generations of this family maintained their unity and have continued to stalwartly support one another.

Russian history has witnessed many generational rifts: in December 1825, when young officers rejected their parents’ and peers’ world and worldview and staged a revolt. Or in the 1860s, when the sons and daughters of priests and generals left home to become Narodniks – members of a movement that strove to serve the people. And today, when so many families have been torn apart by the war: parents and children, husbands and wives, can barely talk to one another.

In the Navalny family, the parents and children are united, Alexei’s wife and mother love one another, and the brothers have stood shoulder to shoulder. In this, they were unique.

At what point was Alexei Navalny first struck by the same feeling that took hold of the Decembrists, those sons and daughters of priests and generals, Lev Tolstoy, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a feeling of shame?

He felt shame that his country was being looted, that it was being run by thieves. That’s where it all started. Navalny was just a young politician when he coined a slogan during a televised debate: “United Russia is the party of crooks and thieves.”

This slogan made him famous.

The goal was obvious: to defeat the crooks. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation – FBK (based on its Russian name, Фонд борьбы с коррупцией) – was born.

But it was soon obvious that fighting corruption meant changing the regime. A network of FBK regional offices was opened, the infrastructure for a political movement. Navalny was was able to rally huge crowds across Russia – crucially not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg – after the 2011-2012 protests against the falsification of election results were suppressed. He inspired the younger generation toward political action.

Not surprisingly, the directors of these FBK offices across Russia are now serving long prison sentences – the government understood the threat that FBK posed. That is why they tried to poison Navalny. That is why they sent him to an Arctic prison camp. That is why they killed him.

Someday we’ll find out whether an actual act of murder was committed on the 15th or 16th of February, or whether Alexei simply died of the cumulative effect of years of mistreatment. Either way, he was murdered.

They killed him because they couldn’t break him.

The annals of Russian history include freedom-fighters who broke down and repented under interrogation and a few who boldly spoke the truth at show trials and conducted themselves bravely in prisons and camps.

But none of them came close to Alexei Navalny.

To barely survive the torments of a poisoning attempt, to then be filmed calling his own assassin – part of a shocking exposé of the true killer – and to then return to Russia knowing full well what awaited him there? Why would anyone do such a thing?

He wasn’t so naïve as to expect a massive uprising after his arrest. He knew the government had a score to settle. It would have been much more sensible to stay out of the country and direct FBK operations from abroad.

But he didn’t want to be just another political émigré, organizing protests at a safe distance. He didn’t want to live in safety and comfort while his supporters and their family members were being put behind bars.

And he wanted to show Putin he wasn’t afraid.

The speeches he gave at his countless trials were so brilliant, the letters he wrote from prison were filled with such indomitable spirit, and the humor and dignity he maintained even in prison were such that they had to put an end to it.

He understood that.

He sacrificed himself for us.

This is why I feel such horror and despair. We have been deprived of an inspiring leader, a future president, a man who was constantly changing for the better and doing amazing things. But we can’t pretend that Alexei Navalny was ever able to shoulder the full burden of Russia’s future.

After his death, people are experiencing an urge to hug. Among the anger, tears, and despair, we’ve been calling and writing one another, meeting up at protest rallies.

I’m writing these words as people are going out to demonstrate, so that they can be a part of what Navalny was encouraging. The Noon Against Putin campaign, which urged Russians to come to polling stations specifically at noon on March 17 – the final day of the three-day presidential vote – was not just a protest against a fixed election, but against the entire brutal system.

Of course, everyone understood the results of this sham election were predetermined, but the campaign gave people a chance to unite, to remind themselves that they are not alone.

And to continue the fight.

And to show themselves and others that Alexei Navalny’s self-sacrifice was not in vain.