The charismatic opposition figure was one of the few real politicians in Russia. He tried to make citizens out of people. This made him dangerous for the Kremlin – so much so that Putin never dared to compete with him in an election.
Alexei Navalny in a recording from 2011: From an anti-corruption activist, he became Russia’s most important opposition politician.
Max Avdeev / Laif
Alexei Navalny’s last earthly journey took him to the Arctic Circle: to Charp, a settlement that was once built during the construction of a long-vanished railway line and has housed prisoners since the Stalin era. He faced a decade and a half of imprisonment in one of Russia’s most inhospitable penal colonies. A decade and a half that seemed excessive to his supporters and many commentators: the hope was that Vladimir Putin’s regime would collapse before then. Political prisoners would be released. The “wonderful Russia of the future” that Navalny aspired to and for which he was prepared to go through the hell of the Russian prison world like a martyr could then become reality.
For years, Alexei Navalny organized rallies against Vladimir Putin’s rule. An important milestone were the months-long protests against Putin’s return to the Kremlin in the winter of 2011/12, in which Navalny took part with other opposition members.
Konstantin Zavrazhin / Getty
Joy until shortly before death
But Charp has become the final stop for Navalny. On Friday afternoon (local time), the 47-year-old opposition politician and charismatic beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of Russians is said to have collapsed and died in the penal colony. This was reported by the penitentiary authority for the Yamal-Nenets region, in which Charp is located. Neither Navalny’s lawyer nor his family or fellow activists were initially able to confirm the death.
His wife Yulia Navalnaya said at the Munich Security Conference that the regime had been lying for years and that it was difficult to believe him. If it is true, President Putin bears responsibility for everything he did to the country and her family. However, given the prompt response from Russian state media, propagandists and the Kremlin, there is little doubt about the veracity of the news.
Navalny’s wife Yulia at the Munich security conference:
“If it’s true, I want Putin, his entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband. And that day will come very soon.” pic.twitter.com/ivZnoGwzr6
— max seddon (@maxseddon) February 16, 2024
The circumstances remain unclear for the time being. Just the day before, Navalny had, as he often does, appeared on video at a court hearing in Kovrov, where he had been in a prison camp until the end of last year. He was joking like he always did. His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said she had visited him in the penal colony on February 12th; he seemed healthy and full of life. She didn’t want to hear any condolences.
Pointing the finger at Putin
“They added murder to the prison sentence,” said the Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitri Muratov, expressing what all the reactions of opponents of the regime have in common: the conviction that Navalny, if he was not killed in cold blood, was due to the deliberately created circumstances of his camp imprisonment has died.
Many Russian commentators who were critical of the regime also bluntly named the culprit: Vladimir Putin, who was touring machine factories in the Urals on Friday and appeared very put together at the meeting with workers. The Kremlin simply assured through Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov that the incident would be investigated according to the rules. Not a word of sympathy passed his lips. The propaganda once again turned the tables and, as after Navalny’s poisoning in 2020, asked who would benefit from death. The fact that, as some whispered, the West had a hand in the matter is simply grotesque given Navalny’s detention in the camp. However, there will also be enough voices in the West who think this is plausible.
Since his transfer to a penal camp in spring 2021, Navalny has been locked in the so-called penal isolator 27 times for a maximum period of fifteen days. This is a cell that is either cold and oppressively hot, where there are only rudimentary sanitary facilities, where prisoners are not allowed to sit during the day and where they only get the meager camp food.
Doctors and human rights activists with experience in the prison system have long said that every day spent in such conditions causes irreparable damage to health. In his first reaction to the news of his death, the well-known Russian lawyer Ivan Pavlov spoke of a “controlled killing in custody”. As the Russian exile media want to know, the ongoing deportation to the penal isolation facility under absolutely ridiculous reasons was ordered by Moscow – but with the cynical addition that the local authorities should ensure that Navalny does not die.
Shameless Russian justice system
Navalny’s death only appears to cross a line. Since the politician and undeterred activist was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok by a death squad from the FSB secret service in Siberia in August 2020 and only survived through a miracle and the help of German doctors, it was clear that the Russian regime and President Putin himself had no scruples know more. What followed in dealing with Navalny and in Russia in general through gradually tighter legislation only confirmed this.
As soon as Navalny returned to Russia after his recovery in January 2021, the judiciary was no longer afraid to shed the appearance of the rule of law that had previously been maintained for a long time in dealing with the annoying political opponent. It was just a matter of locking him away for as long as possible and isolating him from the outside world as much as possible. The further trials carried out in the penal colony, for alleged fraud, then for extremist activity – and thus quite directly political offenses – were even more a farce.
There was an increase in the pseudo-legal fight against him. Previous convictions on economically motivated charges were intended to damage his reputation as an honorable citizen and to prevent him from participating in elections because of his criminal record. In recent years, however, it has simply been a matter of eliminating a political opponent who was clearly viewed as dangerous. The regime managed to exclude Navalny himself from the political process and to destroy his political structures.
But, as the Russian political scientist Alexander Kynew wrote, he retained his inner freedom even in prison. Through the lawyers, he spread his funny and optimistic messages on social networks. The fact that the authorities recently took legal action against these lawyers and accused them of participating in extremist activity already indicated that the Kremlin still sees a threat in an intimate enemy who has been sentenced to nineteen years in a prison camp.
Supported by the base
Alexei Navalny’s death is nevertheless a turning point. After the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, no one else on Russia’s political stage was as much of a politician as Navalny. While the former mediocre intelligence officer Putin rose to power thanks to patronage in the back rooms of power, Navalny’s political strength was based on support from below. He was a charismatic, a tribune of the people who could captivate crowds with his appearances at rallies and in his videos exposing corruption. Putin was too cowardly to ever compete directly with him in an election.
He demonstrated to the Russians something that Putin’s regime always tried to suppress: to show a spirit of initiative, to become active and to fight against injustice, grievances and abuse of power. The trained lawyer wanted to show the masses, who felt they had no rights, that every individual counts for something as a citizen. Together with his furor, with which he mercilessly exposed the hypocrisy of the people’s representatives and the power elite who were enriching themselves, he made himself an intimate enemy of Putin. Although he was not admitted himself, Navalny managed to set up a network of regional branches of his political organization before the 2018 presidential election. It became the focal point for many young people interested in socio-political issues in the provinces.
The tens of thousands who took to the streets across Russia in January 2021 because of Navalny’s film “A Palace for Putin” made the Kremlin feel confirmed in Navalny’s influence. He always overestimated Navalny’s influence and his possibilities. In the West, the youthful-looking opposition figure may have embodied the desire for the idea of a democratic Russia that was miserably lost with Boris Yeltsin. There were also critics who accused Navalny of his initial proximity to unsavory nationalists and xenophobes. But there was always something petty about them because they simply ignored Navalny’s emancipation from these beginnings.
Many in Russia remained suspicious of him
In Russia, on the other hand, he was not only suspicious of a broader mass of people who worshiped the conformism promoted by Putin, but also as an intrusive, too loud troublemaker with contacts to the West. With his often arrogant, even stubborn manner, he also frightened many in the democratic-freedom camp. It was only his martyrdom that brought him broader recognition among political opponents who actually shared the political goals of overcoming Putin’s rule. Russia’s war against Ukraine, which is also a war by the regime against its own citizens, made this even clearer. Navalny’s death takes away another glimmer of hope for many opponents of the regime, especially those who are still holding out in Russia.
In the Oscar-winning documentary, Navalny urged his supporters to stand together in the event of his death. The first red carnations appeared at memorials for political prisoners in Russia on Friday. But the political climate is far too cold for an uprising of the powerless.
After Navalny’s return and arrest at the beginning of 2021, the action against supporters and sympathizers became increasingly merciless. Even murals like this one in St. Petersburg were not allowed to remain.
Anton Vaganov / Reuters