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NAVALNY DIES IN PRISON, AUTHORITIES SAY − BUT HIS BLUEPRINT FOR
ANTI-PUTIN ACTIVISM WILL LIVE ON  
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Regina Smyth
February 16, 2024
The Conversation
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_ A new generation of Russian activists is Navalny’s legacy. Before
his death, Navalny spoke to this new generation: “Listen, I’ve got
something very obvious to tell you. If If they decide to kill me, it
means that we are incredibly strong.” _

A portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is placed at
the monument to the victims of political repressions following
Navalny's death, in Saint Petersburg, Russia February 16, 2024,
REUTERS/Stringer

 

[Read Alexey Navalny's statement to the court, 'Everyone has to make
some kind of sacrifice,'
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as he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 2023. --
moderator]

Long lines of Russians endured subzero temperatures
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in January 2024 to demand that anti-Ukraine war candidate Boris
Nadezhdin
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be allowed to run in the forthcoming presidential election. It was
protest by petition – a tactic that reflects the legacy of Alexei
Navalny, the longtime Russian pro-democracy campaigner. Authorities
say Navalny, a persistent thorn in the side of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, died in prison
[[link removed]]
on Feb. 16, 2024.

For more than a decade, Navalny fought Russian authoritarianism at the
ballot box and on the streets as the most recognizable face of
anti-Putinism, filtering support to candidates brave enough to stand
against the Kremlin’s wishes.

Often opposition does not translate into electoral success. Nadezhdin
supporters did not expect that their man could actually defeat Putin
in the vote scheduled for March 20, 2024
[[link removed]].
Given how tightly the Kremlin controls politics in Russia, the result
of the presidential election is a foregone conclusion.

But for many Russians, the opportunity to support Nadezhdin’s
candidacy was the only legal means they had to communicate their
opposition to Putin and the war. The fact that authorities ultimately
barred
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Nadezhdin from participating suggests that the Kremlin remains
cautious about any candidate who punctures official narratives of a
nation united behind Putin’s war in Ukraine.

That effort to protest the election seems all the more poignant
following Navalny’s death. It reflected the heart of a strategy that
Navalny developed over more than a decade and that I have written
about [[link removed]]
since 2011.

The movement remains

Navalny understood that opposition in Russia was about exposing the
corruption
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in Putin’s party, United Russia; shining a light on electoral
manipulation
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and alerting the world to growing political violence
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Navalny highlighted the very real opposition to Putin and
authoritarian rule that exists in Russia despite attempts to hide it
from the world.

To achieve these goals, team Navalny – and it is important to
remember that while Navalny the man is dead, the movement he sparked
[[link removed]] remains – repeatedly used elections to
make the opposition visible and spark political debate.

Navalny emerged as a political force
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in 2011, when he kicked off a large national protest movement ahead of
the 2012 parliamentary election by labeling Putin’s United Russia
the “Party of Crooks and Thieves.” He held contests to create
memes to illustrate the slogan and mobilized voters who did not
support Putin’s party.

[A protester wearing a hat stands in front of a sign in Russian that
translates to 'We did not vote for crooks and thieves!']

Opposition activists in 2011 declare, ‘We did not vote for crooks
and thieves!’ Valery Titievsky/AFP via Getty Images
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Putin inevitably won the election, with the head of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe observer mission commenting
that due to irregularities and abuses
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in doubt.”

But nonetheless, Navalny’s efforts meant that a new opposition was
in place and ready to take to the streets to fight election fraud.

Getting out of the electoral ‘ghetto’

Despite his arrest and conviction on fraud charges in 2013, Navalny
ran for mayor
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of Moscow that year. In the campaign, he innovated electoral politics,
recruiting young volunteers who met voters on the streets and in their
apartment blocks.

Navalny won almost 30%
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of the vote – double that expected – and claimed that the only
reason Putin’s hand-picked candidate, Sergei Sobyanin, had got above
the 50% needed to secure a first-round victory was due to a falsified
vote
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Navalny later articulated [[link removed]] the
real success, as he saw it, in an interview with fellow opposition
figure Vladimir Kara-Murza
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“We have shown that ordinary people – with no administrative
resources, no corporate sponsors, no public relations gurus – can
unite and achieve results at the ballot box,” he said. “We have
shown that we are no longer confined to a 3% electoral
‘ghetto.’”

Navalny concluded: “For me, the most important result of this
campaign is the return of real politics to Russia.”

During that 2013 campaign, my research team interviewed Navalny
activists
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observed the work in campaign headquarters.

These interviews underscored Navalny’s relationship with the people.
Many of the volunteers rejected the idea that they were working for
him. Instead, they were volunteering because they admired Navalny’s
tactics. They liked his political style. They wanted change in Russia.

Navalny brought Russians alienated by Russian politics together and
empowered them. As one campaign volunteer interviewed
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study argued, “We all were frightened before the first protest and
even left a will before we joined the movement. But it was not a mob.
There were people like us. The feeling we had in Navalny’s office
was the feeling of being with people like me.”

Through the next decade, Navalny and his team continued to return
political competition to Russia’s politics. They built local
organizations that attracted support and found some success
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in Siberian cities Tomsk and Novosibirsk, despite the endless
obstacles
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the Kremlin placed in their way.

Return from exile

The culmination of these efforts is a system Navalny developed in 2018
called Smart Voting
[[link removed]].
Through an online tool
[[link removed]],
the Navalny team encourages Russians to support any reform-minded
candidates in elections and in particular directs voters to the
candidate most likely to beat Putin’s United Russia party.

Research by Russian scholars Mikhail Turchenko and Grigorii Golosov
shows that the tool [[link removed]]
has had a very significant effect on voters and increasing turnout,
opposition votes and popular attention on elections.

Navalny’s efforts seemingly irked the Russian state and may have
been the impetus of an assassination attempt against him by Russia’s
domestic security agency, known as the FSB, in 2020.

Navalny survived Novichok poisoning
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only because international pressure
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forced the regime to allow him to be airlifted to Germany
[[link removed]] for treatment. During
his recovery, Navalny used the attack on him to further his political
activism and convey the regime’s growing brutality. He famously
interviewed his would-be assassin
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of the operation.

Navalny’s return to Russia
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under threat of arrest in February 2021 kicked off the largest street
protests – in support of the opposition leader – since the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

These protests inspired a new generation of activists. They also
marked
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new levels of police brutality against pro-democracy demonstrators in
the streets and in the years since.

Handing on the baton

Since 2022, I have led a research team that has interviewed Russians
who left the country in opposition to the war in Ukraine. Many
participated in the anti-war protests of late February and early March
2022 and point to Navalny’s return to Russia as the origin of their
own political engagement and activism.

As one respondent argued: “My civic position began to emerge. All
this was close to Navalny, his movement, and his encouragement to
notice something, to pay attention … I began to go to rallies, and
became much more interested and aware of politics.”

While Navalny languished in prison camps
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following his arrest on charges of violating parole
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during his recovery in Germany, many of these activists in exile
continued
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to operate outside of Russia, our research partners
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They support Ukrainian refugees and war efforts
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and participate in tracking down children who have been taken to
Russia. They are active in anti-war demonstrations and support
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each other in exile.

This new generation of Russian activists – whether those in exile
advocating for change or those risking their well-being in Russia to
support anti-war candidates – is Navalny’s legacy, and I believe
it is powerful.

Before his death, Navalny spoke directly to the generation of
activists he inspired
[[link removed]]:
“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not
allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are
incredibly strong.[The Conversation]”

_Regina Smyth
[[link removed]] is Professor
of Political Science, Indiana University
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_This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]]._

* Alexey Navalny
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* Russia
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