Alexei Navalny is being mourned as Russia’s most daring, subtle and Western-looking politician. But Navalny’s political battle with tyranny, which resulted in an Arctic penal colony in what seems like state-sponsored homicide, makes his ‘life and fate’ very Russian – a part of a convention of ethical defiance in opposition to merciless and deceitful autocracy.
A fated opponent
Navalny would have been a profitable politician in a democratic nation. However he was a political opponent in Putin’s Russia, which has developed from a corrupt authoritarian state right into a thuggish, brutal dictatorship. One can’t pursue a political profession in present-day Russia: you possibly can both be the Kremlin’s loyal servitor or a part of the ever-silent narod (widespread individuals). Any signal of disloyalty or opposition is suppressed. Navalny was conscious of this higher than anybody else: again in 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent by Putin’s secret police goons. But he returned to Moscow from Germany after life-saving therapy, realizing full nicely that he can be instantly arrested and thrown behind bars.
What may clarify this seemingly irrational transfer? Navalny’s return to Moscow – that fateful day – marked the veritable starting of his Russian story. The historical past of Russian intelligentsia, Russian literature, traditions of political dissent and truth-telling, and the quasi-religious quest for a virtuous life are components of its plot.
Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky observes that Navalny, the actual man of flesh and blood, warts and all – filled with all kinds of contradictions given his flirtation with Russian ethnic nationalism – had was an ‘irreproachable hero, part of a religious myth’. His deeds, braveness and ethical decisions, Glukhovsky provides, are perceived as symbolizing ‘the life of a saint; the death of a martyr’.
Resolute ethical requirements
The Russian intelligentsia, which emerged as a social group within the 1830s, pursued ethical perfectionism. Their robust aspirations have been born of two confluent mental traditions: one non secular, stemming from Japanese (Byzantine) Christianity; the opposite, a secular legacy of Enlightenment moralism. The notion of sovest’ (conscience) was on the coronary heart of the early Russian intelligentsia’s ethos. Having a ‘clear conscience’ – dwelling unflinchingly in accordance with the precepts of reality – was a deep-rooted, social splendid of the intelligentsia.
Traditionally, the Russian intelligentsia arose out of confrontation with Tsarist autocracy. Opposition to the bureaucratic establishment formed the intelligentsia’s guidelines of conduct and beliefs about what was proper or flawed. As Russian cultural historian Boris Uspensky writes, ‘It is precisely the intelligentsia/Tsar dichotomy that lies at the origins of Russian intelligentsia.’ A Russian clever is at all times in opposition, their ethical values contrasting with the workings of a repressive state system.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia might have left the historic scene. Nonetheless, their ethical ideas didn’t disappear: many Russians internalized intelligentsia beliefs by studying basic Russian literature, which in its flip had been the product of Russian intelligentsia’s inventive efforts. Not not like medieval Previous Russian literature, which is totally non secular in nature, the good Russian nineteenth and early twentieth century novel performs a didactic operate: it expounds on a lifetime of dignity, the unending battle between Good and Evil, and the selection between Fact and Falsehood. In lots of memoirs and interviews, distinguished members of the Soviet dissident motion verify that the subversive, ‘quasi-religious’ essence of Russian literature had formed their ethical ideas and unfavourable perspective in the direction of the ‘immoral’ Soviet system.
The martyr’s rule
Alexei Navalny, 2020. Picture through Wikimedia Commons
Alexei Navalny, born in 1976, belonged to a brand new Russian technology: he was a young person when Communism fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. But the components that shaped his ethical outlook seem like the identical as those who have been at work throughout earlier many years. Russian literature appeared to have performed an necessary function. In a letter he despatched to Russian opposition journalist Sergei Parkhomenko not lengthy earlier than his dying, Navalny mentioned some Russian classics. He targeted on Chekhov’s tales and in contrast the darkish realism of some items with Dostoevsky’s oeuvre. The letter ended with a telling exhortation: ‘One has to read the classics. We don’t know them nicely sufficient.’ It’s also troublesome to keep away from the direct parallel between Navalny’s passionate want for reality and the Russian literary and dissident custom of truth-telling, greatest epitomized by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay Dwell Not by Lies; all of Navalny’s stay streams invariably ended with the phrase: ‘Subscribe to our channel: here we tell the truth.’
Alexei Navalny’s ethical rectitude, private braveness and fearless dedication to face by his ideas, it doesn’t matter what, put him on par with a protracted line of Russian victims of political repression, who’ve defied the Russian Leviathan during the last two centuries. The fragmented Russian opposition now has a robust hero fantasy and image to rally round. Putin (or ‘bunker grandpa’, as Navalny used to mockingly name him) was afraid of his most distinguished political opponent when he was alive. Now that Navalny is useless, Putin arguably finds himself in a worse state of affairs. The Kremlin tyrant needs to be reminded of Søren Kierkegaard’s well-known maxim: ‘the tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.’
