There was no more Russian than Alexei Navalny. A patriot who, disdaining a comfortable sinecure in the West in the role of the “poor dissident in exile”, chose to return to his country, embodying in a moving way the idea of sacrifice.
With courage bordering on recklessness, he chose to throw himself into the den of the wolf on January 17, 2021, five months after escaping a poisoning attempt. A state crime that he himself had managed to prove. He trapped an FSB agent on the phone who, thinking he was speaking to a superior, had revealed the details of the plot against Navalny. One hundred percent irrefutable!
In Moscow, reports former ambassador Michael McFaul in Foreign Policy, he strongly limited contacts with the American embassy, so as not to fall victim to the mechanical and hackneyed accusations of the authorities against the supposed “pawn of Westerners and imperialism”. Because this man was no one’s toy.
He insisted – for his final sacrifice – on returning to Russia, because, he said, he loved his homeland with all his flesh and truly believed he could make things change there. He said: “I can’t go into exile, I like Borodinsky bread too much”, this tangy black bread which, he maintained, we cannot make outside of Russia.
Endowed with a solid ego and this patriotism which for a moment – in the 2000s – combined with ultranationalism and xenophobia, he was furious against the regime which, according to him, had wasted the “unique opportunity” opened up in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
According to him, the culprits were the corrupt elites – a few thousand people – who appropriated the national wealth in the chaos of the 1990s. He had a lot against the pure neoliberal “shock therapy” which had allowed these misappropriations. . A therapy which relatively worked elsewhere (Poland), but which was catastrophic in Russia.
The young chauvinistic nationalist changed his ways in the 2010s, adopting the slogan “Make Russia a normal country”. He moved closer to moderate liberalism and social democracy, seeking through judicious use of social networks to spark a social movement.
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He was less a man of theories and programs than a man of action. Around a key idea: the fight against corruption, an obligatory corollary and revealing of the nature of the regime.
In a bid for Moscow mayor in 2013, he officially won 27% to the establishment candidate’s 51%. The real score, according to his team deployed in the polling stations, was 35%, and his opponent did not have 50%. He therefore requested a recount. Of course, there was no recount or runoff. Better: after this unique and honorable attempt, Navalny was never again allowed to run for any elective position whatsoever.
He leaves behind his Anti-Corruption Foundation – dissolved in Russia, reconstituted abroad – which, using modern investigative methods, produced irrefutable and damning documents.
We particularly remember two documentary films, one from 2017 on the immense fortune of former president and prime minister Dmitri Medvedev. And then the other, titled A palace for Putin, broadcast in January 2021, viewed 130 million times, which described an ultrakitsch pharaonic palace, valued at $1.3 billion, on the Black Sea. With all the luxury a dictator could dream of: heliport, hookah bar, hockey rink, vineyard, oyster farm, church.
Their power lay not only in images, figures and descriptions. It was also the style, the humor – ferociously Russian – and the professionalism of the films, which bore the signature of Navalny himself.
Quote from the movie: “You have bad roads and poor health care, because they have hockey rinks and hookah bars. » All this spoke directly to ordinary Russians.
One of the greatest dissidents in Russian history, who will leave his mark.
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