Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
I always questioned why he went back to Russia. I thought he could have done so much more outside of a Russian prison. Intentionally in the middle of nowhere, cut off from his supporters and fellow Russians
But he loved his country and held steadfast in his principles. He is a greater man than many. Could you trust yourself on how you would act when tested the way he was.
Could you trust yourself on how you would act when tested the way he was.
Absolutely. I trust that I would run away like a little bitch. Dude had balls of steel and I truly hope he managed to show the Russian population what a tyrant putin is.
Absolutely, most people that think they’d take the high road and do the right thing in this situation are not being honest with themselves. As much as I’d love to believe that I would sacrifice everything to fight tiranny, I just know that when the time comes I would choose the easy way out and espace somwhere for a better life.
I truly hope he managed to show the Russian population what a tyrant putin is.
He did. And I recoomend you to watch it. Dude investigated his own poisoning.
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There have been examples of the past where martyrs did change the direction of history. Maybe he hoped it would be similar and I guess we are at the find out stage.
Even Lenin stayed out of Russia when the government set it sights on him and waited for a more oportune time to come back. Here’s to hoping Martyrdom will change things, but Russians are very very used to things getting worse and just taking it on the chin.
Happy endings are banned in Slavic history
Fucking hell, when you put it that way…
Yesterday it was Alexei standing up to tyranny. Tomorrow, maybe some else. If we’re lucky, more and more.
He seems like a true patriot in a land of nationalists
He was, himself, a nationalist. Or at least he was in the distant past. He seemed to have distanced himself from that.
Still, he lived by his principles. He wasn’t a robber or a hypocrite. He genuinely cared about Russia. He loved his nation. I cannot say the same for the party of crooks and thieves.
I thought the same, couldn’t figure out why he returned to Russia when he could do more when he was free. Still, his courage is admirable, I wouldn’t have been able to steel my nerves to do what’s right in the face of these dangers.
Going back to be locked up, abused, and die isn’t exactly “right”.
What’s better is to live another day to continue fighting.
I meant in general when opposing powerful bad people, like had he stayed in Germany and continued fighting. I wouldn’t have been able to steel myself to become someone who is a direct enemy of someone who clearly has the power and intent to assassinate his opponents.
I mean I doubt he would have been safe even if he didn’t go back. Maybe a little bit, but how long before he gets polonium tea, or nerve agented?
They already had tried to get him with Novichock and just barely didn’t kill him. I’m sure they’d have tried again.
The sacrifice was in vain, we know Putin is a shithead.
Which “we” are you talking about? Because a lot of Russians vote for him (and I don’t mean just the fake votes, but the real ones as well).
The Russian ballot box is a paper shredder that increments “Putin” by 1.
Votes don’t matter in Russia
They matter. You vote Putin or you vote Putin but the government notes your impropriety. Voting is a purity test.
They may not matter in a sense that you can’t elect anybody but Putin.
But they do matter in a sense of showing the incumbent they aren’t stable.
After successful re-election of incumbent, they fall into a sense of euphoria. This leads to creation of some absolutely horrific and unjust laws.
However, when the re-election is deemed unsuccessful (say 55% voted for “the right candidate”, but the second place got scary high 30-35%), they become timid.
That’s how informational autocracies work. And that’s why elections there absolutely do matter, as they directly affect quality of life. It’s the safest and loudest way of showing the government your middle finger.
The Other Mr. President - by This American Life did a really great episode interviewing Russians on their thoughts and feelings on Putin.
There’s only one name on the ballot.
And did he change their opinion?
Internally? Potentially…at the ballot box? Nope
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You are a Westerner.
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You live after the beginning of the Ukrainian War.
In Russia, for the longest time, dislike of the regime was primarily limited to the youth. The average person had a vague understanding that there was a lot of corruption. However, they did not understand just how deep it went. The average person understood that there was some enrichment going on, but they thought it was mostly local and small-scale. People seldom had personal experience with the repression of dissidents, nor did they know much about the opposition movement.
Navalni opened people’s eyes. He revealed the palaces of the deputies, ministers, and Vladimir Vladimirovich himself. He revealed how corruption was horrendous on every level of government. He revealed the absurdly close ties between the oligarchs and government. He made the repression visible too, thought this was a much more minor part of his project.
On the back of all of his investigations, he built a mass movement. Individual, fractured discontent just leads to depressed people who believe themselves to be isolated, the sole sane man in a sea of nutcases. He united people. He organized demonstrations. He made discontent public and visible, thus opening the eyes of even more people.
The modern opposition movement would not exist were it not for Navalni.
That being said, there were two main issues with Navalni’s work. First, he wasted a lot of energy telling people to vote, and came up with the Smart Voting scheme to vote out URers, even though he himself acknowledged the lack of fairness in the elections. This was a colossal waste of time, energy, and resources. It changed nothing. You cannot vote out a dictatorship.
Second, he was a nationalist, especially early on. Later on he became more of a typical liberal, but his years as the sort of guy to yell “Russia is for Russians” have been harmful to the opposition.
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The day we all knew was coming, sadly. The day he set foot on that plane back to Moscow from Germany, it was not a question of if but when this would happen.
If Russia is like the US with trump, then there’s the active population who are supporting Putin, because even if he’s a bastard, at least he hurts the right people. Then there’s an apathetic horde, who don’t care or are too beaten down to do anything. Then there’s the group that know what’s up and wants change.
The question is if Navalny’s death meant anything. The people who care are already at a disadvantage because of the authoritarian State, the supporters aren’t going to change, and the apathetic don’t have time to care. IMO he would have been better off, alive, outside of Russia and criticizing Putin.
What you said could be true of any event, but reality is, each of these events influence apathetic people to either become supporters of the regime or anti-establishment.
At least, that’s my theory. If not, there would never have been any progress in human society, if things are as static as you theorized.
I think the point is, that he might have been able to influence more, if he was alive, and maybe even free, outside of Russia
I don’t imply society is in a permanent static state, my question is if Navalny’s demise would effect any meaningful change to the status quo.
I think progress comes from young people, not apathetic people who have had changes of heart.
Apathetic parents lead to angry kids, angry kids look for answers. Some of them will find the right ones.
Apathy is not age related; it is a state of mind. You have very energetic grown ups, and very apathetic youth and visa versa.
Russia is not like the US under Donald John. There are indeed rabid supporters of Putin and Russian imperialism (“vatniks”), but the regime functions regardless of popular support.
You are right about what groups of people exist. You are, however, completely mistaken about their importance if you compare Russia to the US under Trump.
My understanding, which is based in large part on my personal experience and observation of the size of protests (statistics suck when dictatorships are involved), is that the vast majority of Russians dislike Putin, but they believe that there is nothing that can be done at the moment.
Doomerism is very strong in Russia. Our prevailing mentality is to suck it up and keep going. It pains me to say this, but in the current conditions of Russia, the doomers have a point.
Everybody know that Putin is a monster, except for the Russians. They need a revolution!
Russians know it to, they just can’t do anything about it.
They know. They just don’t care because he’s “their” monster. Nothing will change in the wake of Nelvany’s death.
This is a harsh lesson in allowing the cult of personality into a democratic election. Everyone should have learned from Hitler’s example but memories are apparently short lived. Now we have people like Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump and a world war is inevitable.
“They” do not hold any particular position. That would be because “they” hold a multitude of positions, at its extreme as many as there are people in the particular society we refer to as “they”.
And lose the drama, because:
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There are always such people.
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Putin became president in 1999 and the last arguably democratic election in Russia was in 1996.
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About Hitler - I think somebody skipped their history and doesn’t know that European states didn’t immediately cease to be colonialist just cause WWII ended and the new reality ensued. And Europeans would behave pretty hitleresque in colonies, think of French in Algeria or maybe Indochina.
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It’s spelled Navalny.
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That didn’t end well last time though
I mean, they deposed a monarch, so that’s good.
It sadly did end. Now another fucking imperialist is in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire
At its peak, their empire was roughly the same size as the British Empire, 35 million square kilometers. Slightly more than half of it was just Russia, though, of course, which makes this a bit of an orange vs apples thing. But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.
But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.
… important parts of which were (declared and even attempted) meritocracy, scientific and social progress, and a promise (which seemed realistic enough) for the future of the whole world.
This doesn’t have anything in common with any big state’s ideology now.
I suppose originally it was, and I do think original goals are important to consider.
Stalin brought an early end to many progressive dreams, though, and it doesn’t seem like Soviet Union ever really recovered from his regressive regime.
I meant 60s and 70s.
The point is that even aggressive attitudes of Soviet leadership were constructed very differently.
Politburo really made collective decisions.
The Communist party and the ministries and local councils and all that could function in obscure, weird and undocumented ways, but they did generally follow laws and rules.
I mean … it really was an empire. Very inefficient and it eventually failed, but still.
Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.
Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.
Indeed it is, but in many ways it’s just a legacy (even if a deeply warped one) of the earlier. Putin was a KGB man, and repeatedly mentions how he thinks the fall of USSR was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies.
Man, Lenin set fire to a good chunk of his own dreams during the Civil War.
The betrayal of the SRs and Makhnovists, the butchering of Kronstadt, the subjugation of local soviets and trade unions to centralized top-down rulership, and nationalization of previously independent cooperatives all helped bring down the dreams of equality and liberty. Lenin created all of the infrastructure that Stalin then used to horrifying ends. IMO this is an inevitable outcome of vanguardism and a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, but that is a topic for another day.
Some of the things mentioned above did manage to survive post-Stalin. There was immense scientific progress in the USSR and the education was the best in the world. Everyone got food, though it was poor-quality and standing in line for it was universal (again, post-Stalin).
Homelessness wasn’t a thing.
Homelessness was illegal in Soviet Union. USA has plenty of problems that are objectively worse in this area, but I’m not sure if just declaring it illegal and sending vagrants to labor camps is a very good solution either.
Sergei Magnitsky already did this in 2009, but I suppose we needed a reminder.
Did he really need to sacrifice himself for that?
Is there seriously anyone who was in denial until they learned about Navalny?
Sadly, yes. Russian State Media is the only source of information for a lot of “normal” Russians. Although that sadly also means that his sacrifice most likely won’t have a large impact on the Russian political landscape.
Then it’s worse than I thought.
Kind of strange that a culture with so many pariahs seems to also have a stranglehold on any dissent.
I guess China is the same way, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
Villaviciencio here in Ecuador also sacrificed himself. Yes, people do that…
Yes, but this is Navalny in Russia.
I don’t understand why he returned to Russia just to get killed.
It doesn’t seem to have achieved anything. Did he think the rigged Russian courts would save him?
Snowden and Assange doing everything they can to stay out of the claws of their fascist overlords, but Navalny just handed himself over to his…
Those who don’t understand that paid little attention to his life and his fight. I suggest you checking out the Navalny documentary at least.
Got a title or a link for the uninformed?
It’s called Navalny. They made it available for free here though not sure if proper subtitles are included https://navalny-film.io/
Otherwise it’s on streaming platforms and torrents.
Awesome thank you
I don’t understand why he returned to Russia just to get killed.
Because in Russia you have to sacrifice yourself and suffer to be “real” politician, and not “stay in cozy Germany”, “preaching from abroad”. Navalny and other imprisoned politicians believe this too, they’re the product of the same society after all.
Actually true. If you remember the “Inception” movie (with di Caprio, but a good one), there’s one thing I’d really want to plant into most Russian-speaking people’s brains.
That they don’t owe anyone suffering or proof or other such things.
And also that when you concentrate on proving that you are true to some goal, you lose the goal. It doesn’t matter how much you sacrifice proving, you may even die, because you still divert from the goal of doing X to the goal of proving that you really want to do X.
That’s called dedicating your life to a cause. He knew he was going to be killed and was willing to give up his life to hopefully bring down Putin at some point hopefully in the future
Unfortunately I don’t think his sacrifice is gonna achieve much. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
I think a good analogy is Claus von Stauffenberg. A german army colonel who in July 1944 tried to assassinate Hitler and very nearly succeeded.
He was not a great person given his position, but did a very brave thing eventually and is now revered as somebody who at least tried.
It will teach people not to do the same thing in the future.
“Bravery” points on reddit-like forums don’t mean much in the real world.
Further investigation has revealed he died of a rare condition where his balls were just too damn big. There are a lot of people in Russia, but not many at all this brave and resolute. I hope his death awakens more of this rebellious spirit. All evil dictators have a tipping point. Nothing is impossible. Fuck Putin. Fuck the oligarchy. Fuck the propaganda machine. Fuck the military. Fuck them hard.
Putin was one already.
Who’s not happy can go here https://neputin.org/ And maybe even here https://shtab.navalny.com/
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Please correct me if I’m wrong but Assange held back dirt obtained on Republicans and only passed out information damaging to Democrats. It’s been a long morning.
Hthhhhh%hhhdqhh%ud
oof
