Alexi Navalny: A Thorn In Putin’s Side
Alexi Navalny:
ENEMY OF THE ROGUE STATE
By Trevor K. McNeil
Rebel Roots
No nation has ever been completely peaceful, no matter what some might like to claim. As though in a self-aware correction to this, some don’t even bother to try and appear civilized, such as the Mongols or the Spartans. Others go through periods of stability, though the next invasion, rebellion, conquest or border war isn’t a matter of if, but when.
On a Reverse Trajectory
One of the main perpetrators of the meat-grinder of Europe was Russia or, as it was known for the majority of the century, the Soviet Union. That doesn’t mean the Czarist period was a picnic, either. Under the czars, someone was always fighting or planning to fight, someone else. Even during the days of the purges, the threat of being purged surely was enough to make a lot of people angry. Russia, is a direct rebuke to the notion of history progressing in a linear trajectory. Putin’s Russia more closely resembles 1961 than the first attempts at democratization in 1991. If anything they are moving backwards. Now, as then, there are those opposing the government, often at risk to their lives by way of assassination by the state. One such death-defying rebel is Alexi Navalny.
Against Type
When you think of the prime enemy of the state, usually a lawyer is not the first person that comes to mind. Yet Navalny is a lawyer by education. He carries the unenviable title of “the person Vladimir Putin fears most.” A title it is unlikely he ever aspired to. But also a title he couldn’t really avoid getting, at least in some version. Navalny has become a persistent thorn in Putin’s side for years. A child of the 70s, now 44, Navalny is old enough to remember both the fall of the Soviet Union, and the game attempt by Russia to become a real democracy under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. He understands, as well as anyone, the serious backslide his nation has undergone under Putin. Corruption and malfeasance everywhere.
Start Small
Navalny didn’t start out as a gadfly on the back of the great bear. Navalny was spurred by what he saw as Putin’s corruption to get into politics in 2000, the year Putin first came to real power. His first foray into politics was the Yabloko party. A bit of an odd duck in terms of Russian politics. Yabloko was founded by former Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Grigory Yavlinsky. The party stands for social market economy, fair competition in politics as well as in the economy, the inviolability of personal property and for equality of opportunity. They have never been close to holding power, but it is still encouraging that such a party exists.
Birth of An Opposition
He left Yabloko in 2007. In 2011 he became a founding member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Two years later, he founded the Progress Party. The name of the party was later changed to Russia of the Future. He maintains a leadership role in that organization as of this date. Despite reviving a suspended sentence on trumped-up (no pun intended) charges of embezzlement, he was allowed to run for mayor of Moscow in 2013. Although he lost he placed a respectable 2nd. Despite Russia’s heavy surveillance and censorship, Navalny is increasingly active on social media. He boasts 6 million subscribers on YouTube and over 2 million followers on Twitter. Attention which he has aimed directly at the Kremlin. In 2017 his documentary on then Prime Minister Dmity Medvedev, He Is Not Dimon To You, sparked wide-spread protests.
I Won’t Back Down
In 2020 Navalny was the target of a poison attack, bearing all the hallmarks of a hit ordered by the Kremlin, Putin is not known for taking criticism well. Navalny survived. His face has been disfigured. And since his return to Russia Navalny faces two years and eight moths in a ‘prison colony’. What used to be called a gulag, for having the temerity to be in a coma from the poison attack when he was supposed to check in with his parole officer. We can only hope he lives long enough to bring about change in Russia, providing a new road to democracy.
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2019/09/29/what-flag-flying-over-white-house/
