Navalny and the mirage of another Russia

At the end of April 2015, during a reporting trip to Moscow, I visited the offices of Aleksei Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign.

At the time, his political party was preparing for the 2016 Russian elections, and his international profile was growing. To many, he seemed the only future leader who could offer Russia a different path — an opportunity that seemed all the more important after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a well-known liberal politician and critic. from President Vladimir Putin, in February 2015.

I have not met Navalny, but I did spend some time talking to several young people who worked on his political campaign and anti-corruption initiative.

I still remember the day well. The melting snow on the path to the campaign building was treacherous, with thin crusts of ice on the dirty slush that soaked the tops of my boots. Inside, the office had the colorful decor of a tech startup. And the energy of the young employees I met was palpable. Many of them continued to work as it got dark outside, and I wondered if the looming threat of government retaliation made their duties more urgent.

Unlike other opposition figures, Navalny was not just a dissident but a compelling politician: one who had built a genuine following, a nascent political party and an anti-corruption cause that won him the attention and acclaim of ordinary Russians.

Speaking to some people in that office, the vague outlines of a more democratic future for Russia were possible: popular support for Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign could increase, boosting popularity, which is one of Putin’s greatest political trumps would be undermined; institutions can show some independence; elite support could break; Putin’s former allies could force him out of power.

No one with any understanding of the situation expected it to be easy. But history is full of examples of democratic changes that seemed impossible until they suddenly happened.

Last week, Navalny died in the Arctic prison where Putin sent him on charges widely believed to have been fabricated to silence him. His wife has promised to continue his work, and his death may make him a martyr. But even if that happens, the path to a different Russia has become much harder to see.

A dissident from the 21st century

All politicians engage in self-mythologization, and the easiest way to understand Navalny’s life and campaign as he wanted them to be seen is to watch the Oscar-winning documentary about him of the same name. It shows him as a dissident for the Internet age: a man who not only continues his political work after surviving an assassination attempt, but who also fools the killer, makes him admit everything while the cameras roll and then uploads the recording to YouTube.

To understand his death, you must go beyond that self-presentation and understand the Russian political system in which he tried to operate. “Nothing is true and everything is possible: adventures in modern Russia”, by Peter Pomerantsev, captures the strange manipulation of reality under Putin’s authoritarian system. In such an environment, no one can be sure of the truth, making it impossible to trust any institution or leader, and everyone is constantly on the defensive.

At the same time, in a place where “anything is possible,” as Pomerantsev puts it, a figure who has a public profile but no actual position or political authority, like Navalny, can still seem like a threat.

Early on, Navalny tried to make a name for himself by embracing ultranationalist politics and cultivating support among the far right that demanded “Russia for the Russians.” But his position evolved and he has not repeated such statements in recent years. (In one of the more surreal episodes of my journalism career, I once interviewed a Russian far-right activist in an anime-themed cafe in a swanky Moscow shopping center. He perused a menu of desserts shaped like cartoon cats while he ranted to Navalny for his friendship in fair weather.)

Instead, it was anti-corruption work that really brought Navalny to prominence, as Julia Ioffe wrote in a 2011 New Yorker profile. To understand why public anger over corruption was such a fertile political terrain, and why effective opposition to it was so threatening to Putin, consider:Putin’s people”, by Catherine Belton, which paints a detailed portrait of how corruption was woven into Russia’s political fabric after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how it fueled Putin’s own career.

Navalny’s aides were generous with their time the day I visited, walking me through several projects with shaky enthusiasm: an initiative to improve local government services here, a political organization there. I remember lots of young people with interesting clothes, lots of whiteboards and dry-erase markers, lots of spreadsheets on Apple laptop screens.

Sometimes, when I meet political organizations, I discover that they have options that I was not aware of, instruments of power that they are willing and able to use. But when I spoke to Navalny’s organization, I realized they had even fewer options than I had thought. Although they were cheerful in the face of increasing state crackdown on their activities and determined to continue, their efforts failed to bridge the barrier between civil society and state power.

The week I was there, the government announced that Navalny’s party would not participate in the vote, citing technical problems with the process of registering regional branches. Creating spreadsheets of unfilled potholes and burnt-out street lamps – one of the projects the team showed me – was a good way to detect petty official corruption and build public trust, but it didn’t bring them closer a political office.

The theory that Navalny could be a real force of political opposition in Russia rested on the idea that even Putin was not entirely immune to scandal and public responsibility. But the force with which the Russian government cracked down on Navalny and his movement actually showed how much the state had already hardened into authoritarianism.

That was Navalny’s paradox. By his ambition to become a politician and to act as if democratic accountability were possible, he personified the end of Russia’s experiment in democratic politics. By challenging Putin’s power, Navalny showed how much of an iron grip the Russian president had on it.