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.
I meant 60s and 70s.
The point is that even aggressive attitudes of Soviet leadership were constructed very differently.
Politburo really made collective decisions.
The Communist party and the ministries and local councils and all that could function in obscure, weird and undocumented ways, but they did generally follow laws and rules.
I mean … it really was an empire. Very inefficient and it eventually failed, but still.
Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.
Indeed it is, but in many ways it’s just a legacy (even if a deeply warped one) of the earlier. Putin was a KGB man, and repeatedly mentions how he thinks the fall of USSR was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies.
Anything is a legacy of what was before. I’m just saying that it’s not a rebuilt and changed USSR or even its part, it’s something new built from the same bricks.
Not of the “expected to be anywhere near leadership by intelligence” kind from what I’ve read.
He repeatedly mentions anything he thinks will make him popular. Loved a few antifascist, centrist and legalist lines too.
BTW, he himself apparently still thinks his power is somehow dependent on popularity, while in fact it’s dependent on apathy only at this point.
He worries about what people will think, however weird that may sound.