Alexei Navalny is being mourned as Russia’s most daring, subtle and Western-looking politician. But Navalny’s political wrestle with tyranny, which resulted in an Arctic penal colony in what seems like state-sponsored homicide, makes his ‘life and destiny’ very Russian – a part of a practice of ethical defiance towards 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 not 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 (frequent 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 could be instantly arrested and thrown behind bars.
What would possibly 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 – stuffed with all kinds of contradictions given his flirtation with Russian ethnic nationalism – had became an ‘irreproachable hero, a part of a non secular delusion’. His deeds, braveness and ethical decisions, Glukhovsky provides, are perceived as symbolizing ‘the lifetime of a saint; the demise of a martyr’.
Resolute ethical requirements
The Russian intelligentsia, which emerged as a social group within the 1830s, pursued ethical perfectionism. Their robust aspirations had been born of two confluent mental traditions: one non secular, stemming from Jap (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 supreme 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 incorrect. As Russian cultural historian Boris Uspensky writes, ‘It’s exactly the intelligentsia/Tsar dichotomy that lies on 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. Nevertheless, their ethical rules 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 completely 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 endless wrestle between Good and Evil, and the selection between Reality and Falsehood. In lots of memoirs and interviews, outstanding members of the Soviet dissident motion verify that the subversive, ‘quasi-religious’ essence of Russian literature had formed their ethical rules and adverse angle in direction of the ‘immoral’ Soviet system.
The martyr’s rule
Alexei Navalny, born in 1976, belonged to a brand new Russian era: he was a teen when Communism fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. But the elements that fashioned his ethical outlook look like the identical as people who had been at work throughout earlier a long time. Russian literature appeared to have performed an vital position. In a letter he despatched to Russian opposition journalist Sergei Parkhomenko not lengthy earlier than his demise, Navalny mentioned some Russian classics. He centered 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 learn the classics. We don’t know them nicely sufficient.’ Additionally it is tough to keep away from the direct parallel between Navalny’s passionate need for reality and the Russian literary and dissident custom of truth-telling, finest epitomized by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay Stay Not by Lies; all of Navalny’s stay streams invariably ended with the phrase: ‘Subscribe to our channel: right here we inform the reality.’
Alexei Navalny’s ethical rectitude, private braveness and fearless willpower to face by his rules, 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 delusion and image to rally round. Putin (or ‘bunker grandpa’, as Navalny used to mockingly name him) was afraid of his most outstanding political opponent when he was alive. Now that Navalny is useless, Putin arguably finds himself in a worse state of affairs. The Kremlin tyrant must be reminded of Søren Kierkegaard’s well-known maxim: ‘the tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.’
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