Russians flock to Navalny’s grave as they grapple with his legacy

Marina, a lawyer from Moscow, decided to stay home when Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was buried last Friday. She had expected large crowds and widespread arrests at the Borisovsky cemetery, given the current climate of repression in Russia, and thought it would be better to pay her respects another day.

She wasn’t the only one with that thought. When she came to lay flowers on Sunday, she had to wait in line for 40 minutes, Marina said in a telephone interview from Moscow. (Like others, she asked that her last name be withheld for fear of retaliation.)

After Mr. Navalny’s funeral – when thousands of mourners had waited outside the church and marched across the Moskva River to the cemetery where he was buried – the crowd was widely expected to thin out. Presumably that was the hope within the Kremlin. In the days since, however, the grave has become a place of pilgrimage for those longing to see his vision of ‘the beautiful Russia of the future’ become a reality.

But still with Mr. Navalny’s deadat the age of 47, in one of Russia toughest and most remote penal coloniesthat dream now seems far away for Marina and many others.

“I didn’t think he would be killed in prison,” she said. “I thought he would actually get out, and it would be a turning point, and everything would change. I haven’t fully processed Navalny’s death yet. For the time being I don’t know, I have no vision for the future.”

That’s not just because he died, she added, “but because forces of evil are closing in,” a reference to those of Russia increasingly totalitarian crooked.

Marina and many others said that just making the trip to the suburb of Borisovo, where Mr Navalny is buried, was a… healing experience. The grave is so high up with flowers that it is often impossible to see the wooden cross upside down.

The line seemed huge when Marina arrived in a bus full of people with bouquets, she recalled, but was twice as long as when she left. Mediazona, an independent Russian news channel, calculated that around 27,000 people used the nearest metro station to visit Mr Navalny’s grave on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“I felt so much better when I saw how many people share the same values ​​with me,” said Yulia, 47, who visited the grave on Saturday. “After Aleksei’s funeral, I felt better emotionally, as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, because I saw that all that propaganda, all those miserable clowns on television, have no influence on the majority of people”

Both women said the crowd at the cemetery appeared to be made up of people of different ages and backgrounds. Marina said she noticed small notes left on the grave by people from Russian cities outside Moscow.

Many people who attended Friday’s funeral were prepared for the possibility that they would be arrested. There were no mass arrests, but authorities appeared to use videos and photos from various sources, possibly to detain people later.

That was no idle threat. Since the funeral, there have been reports of people appearing in footage of the event being visited at their homes by law enforcement and being detained. That’s in addition to at least 400 people arrested makeshift memorials in the two weeks between Mr Navalny’s death and the funeral. The OVD-Info news channel reported that another 113 people were arrested in 19 cities in Russia on Friday for openly mourning Mr Navalny.

“They want to destroy the memory of Aleksei, they want to destroy his ideas, but they cannot do that, because he put his ideas in the hearts and minds of people a long time ago,” said Nikolai Lyaskin, a politician who worked for years with the Mr Navalny.

“Aleksei has always been, seemed and was seen as someone who was unbreakable and unshakable,” he said. “He was like a lighthouse showing the way forward, that things are bad, but we have to fight. Now the lighthouse has been removed and we have to sail ourselves somehow.”

In January 2022, Mr Navalny and seven of his associates were added to the Russian government’s official list of “terrorists and extremists”, putting them on the same legal footing as the Taliban, the Islamic State and domestic far-right nationalist groups. (The Taliban can visit Russia freely, but Mr. Navalny’s associates have fled the country to avoid arrest.) The year before, his organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund, was added to the list, making it illegal for anyone associated with it to lead. for public office and criminalizing ties to the group.

That so many people continue to flock to the cemetery to mourn someone considered a “terrorist and extremist” is “an extraordinary event,” Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann said on Tuesday. on her YouTube channel.

“This is happening in Moscow, in the year 2024, after two years of war and quite massive emigration, precisely by those people who supported Aleksei Navalny or could support him,” she said.

Mr Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who also lives outside Russia, has a video on Wednesday she thanked those who went to a grave she cannot visit.

“When I look at you, I am convinced that everything was not in vain,” she said. “These shots are filled not only with sadness and grief, but also with hope. Aleksei dreamed of a beautiful Russia of the future. And you are Russia. These days I saw a lot of warmth, kindness and unity. And this is exactly what distinguishes us from the people who are in the Kremlin.”

In the video, she urged Russians to heed Mr. Navalny’s call, from prison where he later died, to vote against Vladimir V. Putin in the presidential election at noon on March 17, as a show of political unit.

But the polls from the independent Levada Center are sobering. Only one in ten respondents spoke approvingly of his activities after his death. About 20 percent of respondents had positive opinions about people trying to honor Mr. Navalny’s memory, while a similar number had negative attitudes. “The majority,” wrote the pollsters, “is indifferent.”

For people like Shura Burtin, an independent journalist, Mr Navalny’s death and its aftermath have created a sense of despair.

“It is dangerous to hope that something normal will happen to Russia in the near future,” Burtin said wrote in Meduza, an independent news channel based in Latvia.

“I think it’s important to feel our weakness,” he said. “It is clear that we have no future and that we are very weak. To see how alienated we are, how little we can help each other.”

Unlike Marina and Yulia, Mr. Burtin is in exile outside Russia. But he shared an urgent desire to surround himself with like-minded people after Navalny’s death.

“When I heard about Navalny, I wanted to call everyone. For now, this is the only thing that comes to mind: being closer to each other,” he wrote. “I think it’s time to go into emergency mode and try to behave differently.”

Marina said she wants to visit the grave again soon, perhaps when there are fewer people, so she can say a proper goodbye without being forced to move on.