On Navalny the Politician

A late op-ed in honor of the dead.

There is no précis/tl;dr here, as this post is short. Soon after Alexei Navalny died, I drafted a short op-ed on the prompting of my very astute and encouraging wife. It was a good idea, although unfortunately never got picked up anywhere. Several editors liked it, but the news cycle had regrettably passed by that point. I am therefore publishing the draft here in an unaltered format, having resisted the urge to expand it beyond the traditional word-count of a longer newspaper op-ed. RIP Mr. Navalny.

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NAVALNY THE POLITICIAN

Alexei Navalny's memory will likely be summarized with the gloss of ‘Russian liberal opposition activist unjustly persecuted by a hostile regime’ for most of us here in the West. This is not wrong, but it does not fully grasp the man. 

The reason why we even know Navalny's name isn’t simply because of his activism, his virtues, or his moral clarity. It’s because he was a genuinely charismatic politician in a country where politics itself had been disallowed in its normal, electoral form. He was the Russia of clever election tactics, of democratic nationalism, and of urban populism which we otherwise have never seen in Putin’s Russia. And who knows when we’ll see it again. 

Navalny was an anti-corruption activist, a stirring protest leader, and a steadfast thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly closed political regime of the 2010s. He was the country’s upwardly mobile professional class incarnate and reflected New Russian concerns about bureaucratic failures, the self-dealing of those with political connections, and a deep moral sense that theft (economic and political) was not only bad in the abstract – but simply and even viscerally wrong. 

This was coupled with his unusual gifts: quick-wittedness and fast talking, disarming humor and sharp turns of phrase, and an impressively bountiful energy. And all of this combined with a deep love of country. The man’s drive, his flaws, and ultimately his martyrdom can all be traced to a quirk of character – that he could never really abandon Russia. And in the end this would cost him everything.

Navalny began and ended his political life’s work with investigations and commentary, but the reason he was truly different was due to his role as politician. Finding himself at the forefront of Russia's 2011-2012 protests against Putin’s return to the presidency, it was his personal force of political will that translated a simple slogan – vote for anyone but the ruling party – into a parliamentary election in which the political opposition nearly won a majority of seats. And that impressive number was already pressured by considerable government fraud even then. Although it would be tamed in time, this near win forced a scrambling government to return gubernatorial elections, open up the party system, and earn Vladimir Putin's undying personal enmity. 

A year later in 2013, Navalny would repeat the trick. Running for election as mayor of Moscow, he would spend the campaign glad-handing and personally visiting local districts across the city with teams of youthful staffers, talking to average Russians about public works and daily life. Here too, he almost forced a second-round vote, although the government had gotten more accurate at fixing ballots on election day this time around.

This was the Navalny I remember hearing about when I was first learning Russian in a provincial city just west of the Ural Mountains a decade ago. It wasn’t just through vehement blogposts, exposé reports, and slick videos that Russians of that time encountered with Navalny. It was a real politician attempting – God forbid – to court their votes, on their terms, as if there were real electorates that could actually be won if you tried hard enough. 

The reaction to Navalny wasn’t what I expected either. Russians were divided. Many found the whole thing off-putting or suspicious. Was Navalny the real-deal? Was he a psyop or a plant? Was he too liberal? Or too nationalist? Was he too slick, too know-it-all lawyerly? Was he an authoritarian-in-the-wings? 

As a foreigner seeing the country for the first time, I realized Navalny was special, a game-changer for Russia’s politics. He elicited responses that only happen when you’re a real threat, or a genuine opportunity, or a political curiosity that’s gotten far beyond anyone’s expectations. He was the subject of speculation, of conspiracy, and of unfeigned interest by normal Russians. Everyone had at least a vague opinion on Alexei Navalny. Not all good, and not as a mythic persona. But someone you simply had to have a view on, good or ill or intentionally neutral or anywhere in between. Just like a real politician.

It was exactly because he’d somehow turned himself into a politician that Russians found themselves divided, confused, inspired, and concerned by him. That’s also why Putin could never stop ratcheting up the repression against him. But also why that game had to be played out over an entire, tragic decade rather than concluded with one clean blow.

There are many things we can, and should, remember about Alexei Navalny. His legacy will be quite different here in the West from that in his motherland. We have the luxury to slot him in as tragic-heroic activist and leave it there. But for Russians, then, now, and for generations to come, he will be a far more divisive and interpreted figure. For the singular man who forced himself into a political regime that did not want him, and could not find a way to coopt him, that’s exactly what made him so different.

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Further Reading

Another more substantive essay on this platform should appear in a few weeks time. In the meantime, I invite readers to review two recently published articles from me since our last post.

First, an analytic article in The National Interest with some takeaways on the Tucker-Putin interview from last month. It is a more formal and expanded version of a viral Twitter thread on the subject I’d made right after it aired. You can find the article here: “What Does Tucker Carlson’s Vladimir Putin Interview Mean for the Ukraine War?” You can also find a short TV interview I did on the subject at the invitation of Sky News Australia, found here.

Second, a long-in-coming, peer-reviewed academic book chapter in the newly-released Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism edited by the eminent scholar (and good colleague) Marlene Laruelle. My contribution argues that the growing field of ‘illiberalism studies’ should primarily focus on a political regime understanding of the concept of ‘authoritarianism.’ I show that other ways that the term is deployed as a concept in scholarship (psychological, policy, and process/practice) have considerable conceptual and methodological problems. Academics need to be wary, and frankly should avoid these if possible (they are bad!). You can find it here, “Illiberalism and Authoritarianism.”

Finally, a reminder for those who missed it to take a look at my recent essay here on Substack from last month about new dynamics in Ukraine’s public politics:

- Julian