History of the Present (week ending 2 March 2024)
For me, the story of the week was the Russians who turned out for Navalny’s funeral in Moscow. They braved a massive police presence. Some will have been photographed, identified and face consequences. They chanted ‘Navalny! Navalny!’, ‘Freedom for political prisoners!’, ‘Stop the war!’ and, as the Ukrainian economist Tymofiy Mylovanov pointed out, ‘Ukrainians are good people’.
This manifestation is most unlikely to have any immediate consequences, except more repression in the run-up to the so-called ‘election’ of Vladimir Putin as president on March 17. But it shows us, very powerfully, that there is still an Other Russia, just as there was an Other Germany under Hitler.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, is continuing his work with extraordinary dignity and force. Just watch her address to the European Parliament where she says Putin must answer for what he has done to Russia and to ‘a neighbouring peaceful country’. And tells the EU to stop being boring!
There’s simply no way of gauging the level of support in Russian society, but of one thing we can be confident: a day will come when Alexei Navalny will be celebrated across Russia, too, as the hero that he undoubtedly was.
There’s an excellent reflection on the funeral, and what it tells us, by the BBC's incomparable Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg here.
For me, the finest comment of all on Navalny’s death was a quotation from Kierkegaard (h/t to Michael McFaul, who tweeted it)
‘The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.’ (Kierkegaard)
PS. Paperback of Homelands now out…
… with an updated chapter on the war in Ukraine…Hello
Order it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homelands-Personal-History-Updated-Chapter/dp/152992507X
Europe, UK and US need to support Ukraine so they can win. At the moment the limited supply of hardware seems to designed to ensure a slow defeat of a brave country.
Agree with everything you say about the possibility of “Other Russia”. At the same time, I am struck by the reaction of a Ukrainian friend to whom I made a similar remark. “Why did they wait for Putin to kill him?” she shot back, “why didn’t they mount a Russian Maidan?”
A Romanian contributor to X also reminded us a few days ago that the Romanian people were brave enough in 1989 to rise up, oust the hated Ceausescu and have him and his wife tried and executed within days.
Steve Rosenberg is an excellent reporter and I listen to his every dispatch. But ultimately, we don’t need Rosenberg to tell us what we should already know, which is that Putin is widely loathed and feared within Russia. Prigozhin’s failed coup was the first clear sign of it. Navalny’s murder and funeral is another.
When will that loathing boil over and fear be overcome to give enough Russians the courage to rise up and make short shrift of Putin ?