The Life of Alexei Navalny and the Demise of Vladimir Putin

The death of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, shakes a world

After sparring for several decades with a Russian system directed by President Vladimir Putin, the sudden end of Alexi Navalny leaves an empty battlefield. Uncertainties of media credibility in reporting the altercation made it difficult to judge the essentials of the situation. Events in the last years have made judgment easier, elevated Alexi Navalny, and discredited Vladimir Putin. Disregarding Western opinions, the lives of the Russian president and his principal adversary reveal they had much in common —  times of brilliance, energy, fearlessness, bravado, and dedication to their nation. Their contest is one of the great rival stories of history —Danton vs. Robespierre, Alexander Hamilton vs. Aaron Burr, and Cato vs. Caesar.

Alexei Navalny was everywhere and prominent at every time, staggering through history in the political, business, and media world without clear direction and without care for his salvation. His principal trademarks — a willingness to challenge the system with energy and courage.

The Russian dissident started his political career with The Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), a social-liberal political party. Several years later he became a nationalist and appealed to the Moscow City Hall for permission to conduct the annual 2006 Russian march of nationalist organizations, many of whom were considered neo-Nazi. In 2007, Navalny co-founded the National Russian Liberation Movement and allied himself with two nationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and the short-lived Great Russia Party, a far-right political organization.

In 2012, Navalny again changed direction by agreeing with his associates to register an organizing committee of The People's Alliance, identified as centrist.” In another shift, the People's Alliance  became The Progress Party, with which a daring Navalny beat the system by receiving 27% of the vote in the Moscow mayoral election, “more than candidates appointed by the parties that received second, third, fourth, and fifth highest results during the 2011 parliamentary elections, altogether.” Barred from running in the 2018 presidential election, a harassed, jailed, and attacked Navalny embarked on a career of organizing protests against the regime’s unconstitutional actions, courageous acts that eventually brought him to his terrible fate.

Somehow, among all this activity, Navalny found time to pursue his law practice and tripped into several assertions and convictions for which he was never sentenced, improved his position with the electorate (similar to Donald Trump), and, by a twist of fate, bettered his finances.

• In December 2012, Russia's Federal Investigative Committee asserted that Navalny’s advertising company, Allekt, “defrauded the Union of Right Forces Party by taking $3.2 million payment for advertising and failing to honor its contract.” Not charged or convicted.  

• On 30 July 2012, the Investigative Committee charged Navalny with embezzlement by “conspiring to steal $500,000 worth of lumber from Kirovles, a state-owned company while acting as an adviser to Kirov's governor.” He was found guilty and sentenced to five years. For an unknown reason, the sentence was declared invalid. In 2017, a district court of Kirov reawakened the conviction and changed it to a five-year suspended sentence.

• In 2014, Navalny and his brother were convicted of embezzling $540,000 from a Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. He was given a suspended sentence and his brother was sentenced to a prison term.   

• A Russian Investigative Committee later accused Navalny of “spending more than $4.8m of public donations for his organisations on personal acquisitions. It said he used the funds to acquire property, buy material goods, and pay for expenses such as overseas travel.”  

None of these charges and convictions resulted in Navalny serving prison time. Just the opposite, he eventually benefitted by receiving more than 200 thousand euros from the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) over five years, paid to him from the Russian federal budget.  

His courage and apparent invincibility drove Navalny to escalate challenges to the Russian government and his team published alleged corruption activities by high-ranking Russian officials and their associates. The 2017 documentary, He Is Not Dimon to You, accused Dmitry Medvedev, then prime minister and previous president, of accumulating more than $1 billion of assets including palaces, yachts, and a Tuscan vineyard. In another documentary, Putin's Palace, “Navalny alleged that an opulent property by the Black Sea, was constructed for Russian President Vladimir Putin with illicit funds of $1.35 billion, provided by members of his inner circle, and that Putin is the real owner of the palace.” Navalny must have known that the reports would bring retaliation from Putin. It did, and soon Navalny, who escaped a poisoning attempt, was on the way to his eventual fate.  

Putin burst on the world scene by being elected to replace Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s president. Portrayed in the West as only a former KBG operative, Putin had risen quickly in St. Petersburg and Moscow's inner circles to edge out President Yeltsin’s favorite, Boris Nemtsov, for the presidency. He immediately challenged the oligarchs who controlled the media and economic life, allowing them to retain their riches, stripping them of political power, and forbidding them to engage in any political movements. His status became enlarged by his willingness to challenge the United States’ hegemony.

A Paris School of Economics paper by Evgeny Yakovlev and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, State Capture: From Yeltsin to Putin, explains Putin’s early presidency years.

In contrast to Yeltsin whose political term was notorious for creating and strengthening oligarchs, Putin began his first term in the office by fighting the most famous of them: Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, and Lebedev. Fighting oligarchs was again high on the agenda during his second election campaign. In addition, Putin attempted a centralization process, restricting autonomy of regional political elites and moved political and economic power from the regions to the federal center. A new tax law, which restricted the use of individual tax breaks was adopted, as well as a number of laws aimed at easing the burden of business regulation. A new anti-corruption campaign was launched and some governors who were considered most corrupt, e.g. Rutskoy in Kursk region and Nazdratenko in Primorsky region, were not permitted to run for re-election. The governor of Yaroslavl region, Lisitsin, was under a criminal investigation in early fall of 2004 because of pursuing illegal paternalistic policies towards regional business."

The operations of Putin’s administrations do not agree with the oft-mentioned assertion that he wants to resurrect the Soviet Union. President Putin's Russia has, except for the Syrian conflict, interfered in conflicts that involve the rights and privileges of Russians in neighboring countries. In all of these situations, except Ukraine and the ongoing war in Syria, the battles have been resolved, and the situations have been stabilized, maybe not permanently but quickly and decisively, and with minimal casualties. Because Georgia will never admit to the permanent detachments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as separate nations and Ukraine will not recognize Crimea as integrated into Russia, the words "permanently resolved" are not used. The insurrection in Chechnya was not settled easily but it was resolved decisively. After 15 years in power, Crimea was the only territory that Putin re-attached to Mother Russia. Since then he has incorporated most of the Ukraine Donbass into Russia.

No nation is perfect and no nation’s leader does not have detractors, within and without. Putin’s leadership in reviving one of the world’s proudest and major countries from severe corruption and an economic downfall during the Yeltsin years to again become a world power shadowed the growing sinister elements in his Russian state.

The initial assassination of dissidents seemed efforts of renegade nationalists who could not stomach traitors outside the country and those they assumed were being propped up and paid by intelligence services of hostile governments. As the toll grew and followed a similar pattern, it became apparent that either Putin was delinquent in not having agencies halt the murderous rampage or encouraged the assassinations.

Putin seemed to live an ordinary life, doing his presidential job, baring his chest, and showing his skills in healthy athletic activities. He didn’t escape to lavish retreats, bask on a yacht, or roam a ranch to rope cattle. From an examination of his assets and comparison to retired American presidents, he looked like a piker. The early attacks on corruption morphed into a realignment of corruption. People around him were getting rich and suspicion grew that they were shielding his assets, essential for him in case he was forced to hurriedly exit the country.

The Russian president revived Russia’s national spirit, no small accomplishment. He did not revive its moribund political system and maintained it as a one-party and one-man affair, with an incompetent judiciary that followed government dictates. For a country with its resources, engineering, and cultural talent, Russia should be economically more independent and advanced than it is; under Putin, it has remained a gas and oil producer that has a surplus to pay its bills.

Navalny left no organization to continue his struggle and no document to record his courage. It’s distressing to learn of a valiant person’s life extinguished so easily and purposely in a remote arctic place, far from any witnesses or demonstrators.

Putin elevated Alexei Navalny to the title of Universal Hero, another star in the firmament for people to look up to, remember, and admire.

Putin reached his end, a falling star, soon to hit the ground and disappear forever.