Russian hope dies with Alexei Navalny

It was brave. It was foolhardy. It was almost unbelievable. After his near-fatal poisoning by the Russian Federal Security Service, Alexei Navalny returned to Russia. He was taken away as he disembarked from the plane in Moscow, and thrown into prison on a made-up pretext. After three years of torture, Navalny has been done away with. The Russian prison authorities have reported his death from an unspecified cause. 

Putin’s regime has murdered another opposition leader, and not just any. Navalny, like no one else in Russia, stood for the unlikely promise of change. His charisma, his humor, his clarity of vision, and, above all, his awe-inspiring disdain for Putin’s gangster state, made Navalny into a larger-than-life figure, a David, laughing in Goliath’s face. “I am not afraid,” he would say. “And you: do not be afraid.” His words reverberated like those of a prophet, albeit a prophet unwanted by his homeland. 

Most who will mourn Navalny have fled abroad. They will sigh sadly from their permanent exile about roads not traveled, secretly glad all the same that it was he and not them that paid the price. 

Some may protest or hold public vigils in major Russian cities. It is a dangerous idea, and most mourners will dismiss it out of hand. They will go back to their families, huddle together, grateful that they can at least think freely, even if they no longer can freely say what they think. 

With Navalny’s death, Russia has symbolically turned the corner

For the vast, tired, apathetic, silent majority, Navalny’s death will barely register. “Who? Navalny? He knew what he was getting himself into.” He knew.

“Seeds of tyranny,” President Harry S. Truman once said, “spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.” This of course was from an age when America still bothered. Now its commitment to freedom has waned. And it’s questionable in any case whether America, or the West, or anyone else but the Russians themselves, could have done anything to save Russia. 

Navalny tried. He kept that hope alive. Now he, too, is dead. He is neither the first nor the last. Putin has tasted blood, and found the delicacy appealing to the palate. He does not just kill opposition activists. He has already killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. Drenched in the blood of his victims, Putin talks history. In its murky annals he finds those worthy of emulation, those who ruled with an iron fist and built vast empires. 

Exactly a month from now, the Russians go to the polls to reanoint the czar. He is genuinely popular with the meek, slavish populace. They love him for his brutality. They prostrate themselves willingly before his awesome power. They march to the czar’s orders, unable or perhaps unwilling to understand that it is they who enabled tyranny because they never cared. Most still don’t. 

As Putin’s regime grows more bloodthirsty and more arrogant, there are yet those in the West who want to reason with the dictator. They bury their heads in the comforting sand in the hope that Russia will somehow sort itself out, one day returning to normalcy. It won’t. 

With Navalny’s death, Russia has symbolically turned the corner. There is no more faith, nor any more hope, and no longer any prospect for that “beautiful Russia of the future” that Navalny tried so hard to keep alive in our collective imagination. He died trying. Putin remains, savoring death.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.