‘Russia had someone who believed in the future’ Maxim Trudolyubov on Alexey Navalny’s death and the fate of the Putin regime

The exact circumstances surrounding Alexey Navalny’s death remain unclear, but there’s no doubt he died due to the actions of the the Russian authorities. Journalist Maxim Trudolyubov discusses why Navalny became a target for his government — and what his death means for future of the Putin regime.

This essay was originally published on February 17, 2024.

Reclining in his chair, Putin — with one act of brutality after another — shows the overwhelming power he’s assumed: the power to kill and mock his adversaries. Alexey — with one corruption investigation after another — showed that he believed in the power of truth and could smile in the face of evil.

The Russian authorities killed the Russian Mandela, the Russian Havel. Putin shattered the mirror that showed him the things he didn’t like seeing. He’s afraid of the future and afraid of death, but by taking this step, he brought his own regime closer to a violent end.

“We tell the truth here,” Alexey often said at the end of his YouTube streams. He spoke to the Russian authorities in the language of facts, law, and irony. They answered in the language of lies, revenge, and violence. Navalny proved that the world of Vladimir Putin, where “everybody lies” and “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” can be fought with a world in which lying is shameful and not everything can be bought. The fight between these two worlds isn’t over.

But today, this cowardly KGB agent, resentful of the entire world, who grew up in the stagnation era, has killed a direct, fearless man born a quarter-century later. A person losing his mind over the past has killed someone who gazed openly into the future.

Putin has been in the process of killing Navalny for several years, but only now has he finally achieved his goal. This process began long before August 2020, when Alexey was poisoned in Tomsk. As his team’s investigation later showed, the murderers began pursuing him several years earlier. There is no basis for believing the “diagnosis” that the prison authorities are insisting on and that officials will continue to repeat. This is a political assassination committed by Putin and his cronies, reveling in their impunity, and it’s meant to send a message.

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz opened his book The Captive Mind with a parable in which occupying forces — alluding to the Soviet army — distribute pills that make people accept the reality of occupation. Albert Camus’s novel The Plague depicts a society fighting against a deadly virus. Many saw this as an allegory for the French resistance against Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The tragedy of Russia is that it didn’t fall victim to outside forces that forced society to submit to aggressors. No villains came and infected Russians with an unknown “plague.” Alexey understood who he was dealing with better than many.

An admirer of the Soviet system, Putin essentially took one main thing from it: the habit of using emergency powers that were originally devised to combat the enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution. Just over a century ago, when this revolution occurred, the modest limitations to the central government’s power that had been put in place over the previous half-century of tsarist Russia were destroyed. Since then, rulers and ideologies have changed, but the willingness of the country’s leaders to place themselves above the law has always remained in place. Russia is a state in which the more unchecked power one has, the more legitimate one’s rule is.

“When we come to power, our first step must be to limit this power,” Alexey mused during a conversation I had with him long ago. Navalny always understood that it’s crucial not to stoop to the same level as Putin’s government. It’s this government, not Navalny, that’s the real extremist — despite Kremlin-invented verdicts that, as always, turned the truth inside out.

The Putin regime’s emergency measures were, from the start, a conscious escalation of the “danger” level that was necessary for him to justify unchecked power. But every new wave and every new political murder has increased, not diminished, the threat to his personal well-being, and then to his regime’s very existence. Simply because the number of people willing to fight back was growing. And as he strayed further from the rule of law, Putin began feeling the danger he faced more acutely — and claimed it was a danger to the whole country. Motivated by fear for his own skin, he secured the right to dispose of people’s lives and all the country’s resources.

Russia’s ruling authorities and the elites who support them have assumed the right to execute their enemies and promote their friends. Publicly rewarding the loyal and almost just as publicly punishing the disloyal is the modus operandi of organized criminal groups. By going beyond the bounds of the law, Russia’s political regime has entered a realm where good and evil are locked in conflict.

Evil is an attempt to impose one’s will on the whole world. It’s forcing people to apologize on camera, it’s loyalty pledges, it’s lavish rituals, it’s the stolen “Trinity” icon from the Tretyakov Gallery, which they want to turn from a sacred object into an amulet. Their only true beliefs are loyalty to the boss, carrying out orders, and following the rules of the criminal “honor code.”

But even when evil is existential, like that of Putin’s regime, it’s possible to describe it in legal terms, classify its crimes, and find punishments for it in the law. This is exactly what Alexey has been doing for years.

Russia had someone who believed in the future. Navalny represented a chance — even for the people currently in power. By destroying their counterbalance — the person who sought to stay within the confines of the law — they destroyed the possibility of a soft, legal transition of power.

People in Russia need us more than ever now. Help us to continue our work.