In late April 2015, while on a reporting trip to Moscow, I visited the offices of the anti-corruption campaign headed by Alexei Navalny.
At the time, his political party was preparing for the 2016 Russian elections and his international profile was growing. To many, he appeared to be the only leadership candidate who could offer Russia a different path — a possibility that seemed even more important after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a well-known liberal politician and critic of President Vladimir Putin in February 2015.
I didn’t meet Navalny, but I spent time talking to several of the young people working on his political campaign and anti-corruption initiative.
I remember the day well. The melting snow on the trail to the campaign building was treacherous, thin crusts of ice over dirty slush that soaked over my boots. Inside, the office had the colorful decor of a tech startup. And the energy of the young staff members I met was palpable. Many of them remained at work as darkness fell outside, and I wondered if the looming threat of government reprisals permitted their duties.
Unlike other opposition figures, Navalny was not just a dissident, but a compelling politician: someone who had built a genuine following, a fledgling political party and an anti-corruption cause that won him attention and recognition among ordinary Russians. .
Talking to some of the people in that office, it was possible to see the blurry contours of a more democratic future for Russia: Popular support for Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign may increase, undermining the popularity that was one of the biggest political advantages of Putin. institutions may demonstrate some independence. Elite support can be broken. Putin’s old allies may force him out of power.
No one who didn’t understand the situation expected it to be easy. But history is full of examples of democratic change that seemed impossible until it suddenly happened.
Last week, Navalny died in the Arctic prison where Putin sent him on charges widely believed to have been fabricated to silence him. His wife has promised to continue his work and his death may make him a martyr figure. But even if that happens, the road to a different Russia has become much more difficult.
A 21st century dissident
All politicians engage in self-mythologizing, and the easiest way to understand Navalny’s life and campaign as he wanted them to appear is to watch the Oscar-winning documentary about him of the same name. It shows him as a dissident for the Internet age: a man who not only continues his political work after surviving an assassination attempt, but also pranks the killer, gets him to admit the whole thing as the cameras roll and then the recording goes up on YouTube.
To understand his death, you have to go beyond this self-presentation and understand the Russian political system in which he was trying to function. “Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia,” by Peter Pomerantsev, captures the strange manipulation of reality under Putin’s authoritarian system. In such an environment, no one can be sure of the truth, making it impossible to trust any institution or leader, and everyone is constantly on the defensive.
At the same time, in a place where “anything is possible,” as Pomerantsev puts it, a figure who has a public profile but no real position or political power like Navalny can still seem a threat.
Early on, Navalny sought to make a name for himself by embracing ultra-nationalist politics, cultivating support among the far-right who demanded “Russia for Russians.” However, his attitude evolved and he did not repeat such statements in recent years. (In one of the most surreal episodes of my journalism career, I interviewed a Russian far-right activist in an anime-themed cafe inside an upscale Moscow shopping mall. He studied a menu of cartoon cat desserts while speaking out against of Navalny for his fair-weather friendship.)
Instead, it was his anti-corruption work that really brought Navalny to the fore, as Julia Ioffe wrote in a New Yorker profile in 2011. To understand why public anger over bribery was such fertile political ground, and why effective opposition in that she was so threatening to Putin, consider Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People,” which details how corruption was woven into Russia’s political fabric. after the collapse of the Soviet Union and how it fueled Putin’s own career.
Navalny’s staff members were generous with their time the day I visited, walking me through various projects with enthusiastic enthusiasm — an initiative to improve local government services here, a political organizing effort there. I remember lots of young people in interesting clothes, lots of whiteboards and dry markers, lots of spreadsheets on Apple laptop screens.
Sometimes when I meet political organizations I find they have options I didn’t know about, levers of power they are willing and able to pull. But speaking with Navalny’s organization made me realize that they had even fewer options than I had thought. Although buoyant in the face of increasing state repression of their activities and determined to continue, their efforts have failed to cross the barrier between civil society and state power.
The week I was there, the government announced that Navalny’s party would not be on the ballot, citing technical issues with the regional branch registration process. Creating spreadsheets of unpaid potholes and burned-out streetlights—one of the projects the team had shown me—was a good way to track petty business corruption and build trust with the public, but it didn’t bring them closer to politics. offices.
The theory that Navalny could be a real political opposition force in Russia rested on the idea that even Putin was not completely immune to scandal and public blame. But the force with which the Russian government destroyed Navalny and his movement actually showed how much the state had already hardened into authoritarianism.
This was Navalny’s paradox. By setting out to become a politician and acting as if democratic accountability were possible, he came to personify the end of Russia’s experiment in democratic politics. By challenging Putin’s authority, Navalny showed just how iron-fisted the Russian president was.
