How Alexei Navalny Changed History
He will not have the chance to lead Russia. But his movement will outlast him.
In the early 1980s, a number of repressive regimes held dissidents in prison. Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia was confined to a cell near the Prague airport, Lech Walesa of Poland was confined in a town near the Soviet border, and Nelson Mandela of South Africa was confined in a cell on Robben Island, off the coast off Cape Town.
A little over a decade later, after the end of the Cold War, all of these regimes fell. And these former prisoners were elected as presidents. Particularly in the case of Walesa, who lost re-election in 1995 after one term, they were sometimes less effective in power than as dissidents. Nevertheless, these people had the moral authority to lead their new democracies out of decades of repression.
Before his death in a Russian prison on February 16, it was possible to imagine Alexei Navalny following a similar route to power after Putin died or was somehow forced to leave power. However, the movement that Navalny created has already succeeded, will outlast him, and still has the potential to change Russia.
More than any other Russian politician, Navalny succeeded in galvanizing the apathy for the Putin system into a political movement. In 2011, he said in a radio interview that Putin's party, United Russia, was one of "crooks and thieves." It became a popular rallying cry at protests and on social media. His documentaries about the corruption of Dmitry Medvedev and about the building of Putin's Black Sea palace garnered millions of views on YouTube and crystallized what many people suspected -- that the Kremlin was stealing the country's wealth hand over fist. In 2013, Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow and got nearly 30 percent of the vote despite a state-media blackout. He would never be allowed on the ballot again.
Another reason that Navalny's movement will outlast him is because he nurtured political talent in his own organization. Inside Russia, his movement is outlawed as "extremist" and not allowed to operate. However, from Vilnius, Lithuania, his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, continues its political and investigative work. Unlike Putin, who as a despot, views any up-and-coming political talent as a threat, Navalny promoted talent. Also unlike Putin's all-male inner circle, Navalny promoted women like Lyubov Sobol and Maria Pevchikh. Anton Barbashin, a Russian political analyst based in the U.K., posted on X, "At some point Putin will end. I am willing to bet Maria Pevchikh would be among leading figures in the pro-democratic camp. She's tough as nails.” In addition, his wife, Yulia, has already stepped into the spotlight to continue his work.
Navalny's funeral was held on March 1 in Moscow under heavy police presence; it was heartbreaking. The photo of his open casket from inside the church was the last photo we will see of him. Attendees came up to his mother after and said, "Thank you for your son." Navalny was funny; the funeral had moments of humor. After Navalny’s coffin was lowered, people threw handfuls of soil into the grave. The orchestra played the theme music from the Terminator movies, recalling Terminator 2, which one of Navalny's associates said that the dissident thought was "greatest film of all time." The scene recalled the end of the movie, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg character is lowered into molten steel while he gestures a thumbs-up.
At the same time, attendees described the funeral as hopeful because so many people joined despite fears of being arrested or for men, being given a draft summons. Elena Milashina, who last year was beaten, shaven, and doused in green dye for her reporting on Chechnya, told the New York Times that it was "the most optimistic funeral I can remember." She added, “There was no grief. There was this surge of inspiration that we are all together, and that there are many of us.”
Like the communist regimes of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which by the 1980s garnered fear but next to no enthusiasm among their people, Putin's regime fits what the Czech dissident-turned-president Havel called the "post-totalitarian system." By this, he did not mean that totalitarianism was over, but it was differently organized than under Stalin or Hitler. In this system, the government covers up its repression with lies and rather than ruling primarily by brute force, its subjects live in a web of fear, self-censorship, and passive submission to authorities.
The attendees at Navalny's funeral were breaking out of this post-totalitarian mindset, which is pervasive in Putin's Russia. According to the Moscow Times, Russian authorities feared a repeat of Russian scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov's funeral in December 1989, where thousands showed up in a moment of unity. Thousands also showed up to Navalny's funeral in a moment of unity. While the Soviet Union collapsed two years after Sakharov's funeral, it's far from clear that will be the case with Putin's regime.