Alexei Navalny was the most prominent Russian opposition politician and a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin. His legacy lives on. The post It’s been 1 year since Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died appeared first on The World from PRX.
On Sunday, many Russians will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of Alexei Navalny, the most prominent Russian opposition politician and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin.
In 2020, he was poisoned, likely by Kremlin henchmen. After regaining his health, he returned to Russia only to be imprisoned.
Three years later, he died in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.
Today, Navalny’s legacy lives on — though his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, is still trying to figure out its footing without its charismatic leader, especially in light of the fact that human rights in Russia continue to deteriorate under Putin.
Since Putin came to power in Russia, there’s been a gradual crackdown against any form of dissent — a process that has only accelerated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Roman Dobrokhotov, chief editor of The Insider, a Russian investigative outlet based outside the country, said that Navalny’s death marked a turning point.
“This is a change of political eras in the country. Putin showed that he burns all the bridges with the West, with civil society; there will be no turning back, that he doesn’t care about the consequences,” he said.
According to Dobrokhotov, the oppressive political environment in Russia today is even more severe than in the late-Soviet period.
“It’s more like Stalin’s era when the government terrorizes people by killing its opponent and showing everybody that if you try to be vocal, you will be the next. So, if we can kill Navalny, that means that we can kill anyone,” he explained.
Putin always saw Navalny as a threat — someone who proved that he could organize mass street protests.
Dobrokhotov said that Putin’s attitude toward Navalny as an internal enemy was almost superstitious.
“Vladimir Putin really believed in this symbolism. For example, he never mentioned his name: Alexei Navalny’s name. So, he always described him as some politician but he never pronounced his name out loud. So, I think he has some semi-religious attitude that this is something more than just a political fight,” he said.
In his first public pronouncement about Navalny about a month after his death, Putin mentioned him by name for the first time in years. Even after his death, the Anti-Corruption Foundation has been vilified by the Kremlin. It’s been labeled an extremist organization, making it impossible for the group to do work in Russia.
Ben Noble, a professor of Russian politics at University College London and the co-author of a book about Navalny, said that Navalny’s colleagues remain politically active in exile.
“The team have continued their investigations into elite corruption in Russia, but there, I think, we have to pause a bit and ask the question, ‘Is that approach still effective?’” he said.
When Navalny was alive, his organization’s investigations about government corruption were a sensation. They racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube and even led to mass protests.
But these investigations don’t resonate the same way they used to.
“This idea of anti-corruption investigations is a little bit outdated in the country that is already waging a war against its neighbors, and is also waging a war against its civil society,” Dobrokhotov said.
Since Navalny’s death, the videos that his team puts out don’t get as many views.
There’s also been a lot of infighting among the Russian political opposition in exile.
“The worry now though, is that without the charismatic singular figure of Navalny, those squabbles and those conflicts, they take up even more oxygen and make people feel disillusioned with the opposition. That they’re more interested in fighting each other, rather than constructing a vision for the future,” Noble explained.
Some of Navalny’s critics and supporters have questioned his decision to return to Russia.
“Navalny felt he didn’t have a choice. He considered himself to be a Russian politician who had to be in Russia in order to be effective and the language of ‘mistake,’ I don’t think then applies. Even if some people might step back and say, maybe it was a selfish move because we no longer have that voice on which we relied so much,” Noble said.
Noble added that Navalny stood out among Russian politicians because of his voice — his irony and dark sense of humor. Navalny was one of few Russian politicians to show a human side, sharing social media posts of him and his family.
Nikita Kulachenkov worked for Navalny’s organization for seven years.
He said that Navalny was authentic, principled and at times, stubborn: “He was like a vehicle and a person showing hope, that Russia can change, and be a country that we wanted it to be, and like being, as we say, a normal country.”
Kulachenkov said that right now, there’s a sense of demoralization among Russians who oppose Putin.
In a 2022 Oscar-winning documentary, Navalny was asked to share a message in the event that he’d be killed.
“My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: [don’t] give up,” he declared.
He went on to say in Russian that, “If they decided to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong … we don’t realize how strong we actually are.”
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