The Death of Alexei Navalny

Photo: free.navalny.com

Dear Parish Faithful,

I am sure that most of you have heard that the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died last Friday while languishing in a Siberian prison near the Arctic circle (a prison that was formerly part of the Soviet Gulag slave labor camps), the victim of an oppressive authoritarian system that is responsible for his death, regardless of what the final "medical" reason behind his death actually is. That is something we may never know. And only God knows what he suffered in that prison for the last three years. 

In an age seemingly devoid of heroes, Navalny happens to be precisely that - a man of great courage and integrity. In short - a real hero. And these powerful virtues are in sharp contrast with the dictator who feared his principled opposition and then persecuted him. After nearly dying from an attempt to poison him, Navalny bravely returned to Russia to resume his role of opposition to the Putin regime. He was immensely popular. But he clearly understood the danger of returning to his home country and putting himself within the grasp of the authorities. As put in a new article in "Foreign Affairs" by the journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan:

For Russian society, confused, depressed, and constantly besieged by an ever more repressive regime, Navalny was a lone unifying figure. Although Russian authorities isolated him in increasingly restrictive layers of confinement since his arrest on his return to Russia in 2021, he continued to have that stature right up to the moment of his death. Navalny’s demise marks a dark new step in Putin’s ruthless pursuit of power. But it also raises a stark challenge for Russia’s opposition, which must now figure out how to sustain the unity he created and seize the movement he left behind.

I do believe that it is "meet and right" to acknowledge Alexei Navalny's tragic death so that we can think about what it means to stand up today for truth and honesty in a time when posturing and rhetoric are being rewarded by a great deal of public opinion. If the word martyrdom means "witness," we can say that Navalny was a martyr, for he was a witness who gave his life for the sake of defending justice and honesty - what we would call "righteousness" -  as did St. John the Forerunner. Like St. John, he boldly stood up to and spoke against a leader who ruled through fear and oppression. The Herods of old have been replaced all through history by latter-day tyrants exhibiting the same dreary traits of corruption and cowardice. They can only respond to strong morally-based opposition by repression and persecution. That is precisely why history judges them as "infamous." But their victims are deeply respected and remembered as heroes and "icons" of goodness and moral integrity. 

I would like to also share a couple of paragraphs from an article by the esteemed journalist and historian, Anne Applebaum, a scholar who has spent most of her professional life studying and writing about totalitarian regimes in which basic civility is cynically trampled on. The article from which this paragraphs is taken, was published on Friday in the Atlantic Monthly and is entitled "Why Russia Killed Navalny."

The enormous contrast between Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of Putin’s regime will remain. Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision.

Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.

Alexei Navalny was a man of great moral integrity. His untimely death is a tragedy. We hope that it was not in vain. As we exclaim in the Church: Memory Eternal!