The Kremlin leader has a taste for the trappings of wealth but only distaste for true political competition. After coming to power in 2000, he easily shoved aside wealthy oligarchs, muted the independent media and installed his own cronies as the new elite. But in later years, he faced in Mr. Navalny a true rival. Mr. Navalny summoned tens of thousands of people to the streets to protest the “party of crooks and thieves,” as he called Mr. Putin and his cadre of former KGB men. Mr. Navalny captured the hopes of many Russians to be a normal country — a democratic one.
Mr. Putin undoubtedly hopes that Mr. Navalny’s death not only eliminates an irrepressible, principled and courageous opponent, but also will squelch the aspirations he embodied for so many others: to live without fear from the state, to choose their leaders, to say and think what they believe, to make free choices in a free market and to travel the world. All of these liberties were denied in the Soviet Union, where Mr. Navalny was born; they were unleashed tentatively under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and then fully during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, when Mr. Navalny came of age.
Yeltsin failed in one crucial respect, to establish the rule of law. Russia was thrust into an era of fierce oligarchic capitalism: wild, violent and corrupt. This profoundly shaped Mr. Navalny’s early career after law school, when he focused on fighting corruption by exposing it. He was also a youthful nationalist who campaigned against immigration to Russia from Central Asia and who took part in a march in Moscow that drew some extremists.
As Mr. Putin pushed Russia deeper into dictatorship, especially after the protests of 2011-2012, Mr. Navalny evolved into more of a champion of democracy and practical political action. His campaign for mayor of Moscow in 2013 displayed a flair for grass-roots mobilization. It spawned a national movement. Mr. Navalny pioneered Smart Voting, an app that challenged United Russia, the Kremlin-backed party, by helping voters find local candidates opposed to Mr. Putin’s party. Mr. Navalny and his associates also demonstrated extraordinary talent with video, creating a series of YouTube documentaries that exposed the lavish lifestyles of Mr. Putin and his elite. Even from his Arctic jail cell, Mr. Navalny just a few weeks ago proposed ways that millions of Russians could protest on the day of Russia’s upcoming presidential election, which Mr. Putin is certain to win without serious competition.
Through it all, Mr. Putin tried desperately to repress Mr. Navalny and his movement using censorship, subversion, arrests and the attempted poisoning of Mr. Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok while he was on a trip in central Russia in August 2020. Mr. Navalny survived and fought back with an incredible, steely determination. An Oscar-winning documentary film about his struggle shows him on the phone with one of the poisoning’s perpetrators — an officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service — coaxing the man into a devastating confession.
For all his personal suffering, Mr. Navalny never succumbed to despair or lost his mordant sense of humor. Trapped in solitary confinement in prison, he noted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was held in “a 2.5 x 3 meter concrete kennel.” Most of the time, these cells were cold and damp, he said, but “I got the beach version — it’s very hot and there’s almost no air.” He was often denied a pencil and paper but, in November, having been imprisoned for more than 1,000 days, he posted an appeal for Russians to read books about their own recent history.
Mr. Navalny’s death is a reminder to the United States and its allies that, in Mr. Putin, they are up against a ruthless foe whose primary method is to use force. Mr. Navalny’s death is an enormous loss to his family and friends, and to the ideal of a free and democratic Russia. But such ideals cannot be slain. Mr. Navalny’s legacy will be a never-ending struggle to realize them.
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