24 Time February 15/February 22, 2021
Navalny, the detained leader of the Russian
opposition, was arrested upon his return from
Germany, where he had been recovering from
an attempt on his life by Russian intelligence
agents. He had called on social media for na-
tionwide protests.
They were on rooftops in Vladivostok.
Protesters thronged the city squares of
Novosibirsk and Irkutsk, where they chanted,
“We will not leave.” Authorities roughed them
up, even the kids, in Moscow, where as many
as 40,000 turned out, some to chant the com-
mon refrain “Putin is a thief!” Despite the
dragnet of arrests and state harassment, the
protesters were unbowed and returned to the
streets across Russia a week later, on Jan. 31,
all on behalf of one man.
To the Kremlin, officially, Navalny is a non-
entity, a convicted fraudster, a dangerous CIA
agent sent to foment regime change, or all of the
above. To Westerners, he’s the dissident who
survived a state as-
sassination plot,
then helped solve
his own attempted
murder. To millions
of Russians, he is the
country’s most fa-
mous and persistent
gadfly, the vivisec-
tionist of its crooked
ruling class.
The videos his
Anti-Corruption
Foundation put
out mix satire, pop
culture and zippy
animation with a connect- the-dots forensic
approach to exposing the corruption among
oligarchs, ministers and law- enforcement of-
ficials, who aren’t exactly hiding their ill-gotten
gains when they show up in public with wrist-
watches worth many times their annual sala-
ries. If there’s a theme to Navalny’s oeuvre, it
is that Russia’s modern kleptocracy is the off-
spring of an unholy matrimony of former mid-
level KGB officers and a post- Soviet nomen
klatura of bandits in business suits.
The obvious question, then, was why Na-
valny chose to go back to Russia after proving
just how much his enemies want him dead.
He has repeatedly ruled out becoming an-
other exile of Putin’s regime because, as he
explains, that would be its most sought-after
outcome after his physical elimination. It’s
easy to ridicule and dismiss a Kremlin op-
ponent hurling invective from abroad, but
much more difficult to do so when he does
so from within the lion’s den. By returning to
Moscow, he conducted his own qualitative
plebiscite: How much power does he really
wield if tens of thousands across Russia are
willing to defy truncheons, cages and below-
freezing temperatures to set him free?
For one thing, Navalny, who was sentenced
on Feb. 2 to more than 2½ years in a penal col-
ony, has put Putin in an obvious bind: killing
him now means creating a martyr and precipi-
tating even more domestic unrest, not to men-
tion incurring increased Western sanctions at
a time when a new White House has shown
a far greater willingness to confront Moscow.
Older ralliers in the protests said they hadn’t
taken to the streets since the collapse of the So-
viet Union. By one estimate, 42% of those who
turned out are newcomers to political activism.
Navalny’s suffering combined with his relent-
less exposure of corruption — something Putin’s
own lieutenants have described as a pathology
eating away at the
nation—have won
him admirers in
the unlikeliest pre-
cincts. A large seg-
ment of Navalny’s
online fan base con-
sists of those who
were born after
Putin became Presi-
dent in 2000.
None of this
means Putin’s reign
is in immediate jeop-
ardy. It just means
it’s found its most
effective opponent. Unlike so many other dis-
sidents in recent years, Navalny is untainted by
any past entanglement with the system he now
opposes. He never served in the Russian govern-
ment nor made a fortune by enabling, only to
later repudiate, his former masters out of princi-
ple or opportunism or both. And he speaks in
a 21st century, digitally savvy language: mor-
dant, ironic and thoroughly unimpressed by au-
thority. More important, he gets results.
At a virtual meeting with Russian uni-
versity students, Putin was asked about his
$1.5 billion Black Sea pleasure dome, which
was exposed by Navalny’s investigations. Al-
though he couldn’t bring himself to utter Na-
valny’s name (he never does), he disclaimed
ownership of the palace. So now the dictator is
answering his prisoner’s questions.Weiss is writing a history of Russian military
intelligencePolice detain a protester at a Moscow rally in support
of Russian opposition leader Navalny on Jan. 31SHORT
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