Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
Because in Russia you have to sacrifice yourself and suffer to be “real” politician, and not “stay in cozy Germany”, “preaching from abroad”. Navalny and other imprisoned politicians believe this too, they’re the product of the same society after all.
Actually true. If you remember the “Inception” movie (with di Caprio, but a good one), there’s one thing I’d really want to plant into most Russian-speaking people’s brains.
That they don’t owe anyone suffering or proof or other such things.
And also that when you concentrate on proving that you are true to some goal, you lose the goal. It doesn’t matter how much you sacrifice proving, you may even die, because you still divert from the goal of doing X to the goal of proving that you really want to do X.