Courage for the Ages

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny sacrificed his life to end the tyrannical rule of Vladimir Putin and make possible a better Russia. He was an example to us all.

Alexei Navalny, leader of the Russian opposition. R.I.P. (Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Think of the courage it took Alexei Navalny to return to Russia in January 2021. He had been poisoned five months earlier in Siberia by what doctors in Berlin determined was Novichok, a Soviet-era, military-grade nerve agent. He almost died from this attempted murder; his condition was so dire that German doctors induced a coma and his recovery took many long months. He only survived the initial painful effects of the poisoning because a pilot on Navalny’s flight back to Moscow from Siberia diverted the plane to get him emergency treatment. After French president Emmanuel Macron urged Russian president Vladimir Putin to shed light on this murderous act, Putin only responded by condemning the “unsubstantiated” charges. (Later, a Russian FSB agent would admit to an assassination plot.)

It was not the first time Russia’s leading opposition figure would face a life-threatening attack. Nor—as we learned Friday of the 47-year-old’s death in a high-security Arctic penal colony established by Stalin—would it be the last. In 2017, he lost most of the sight in one eye after suffering a chemical burn from a green substance that an assailant threw in his face.

A lesser man, indeed, a less extraordinary, less courageous individual, would have refused a return to Moscow in 2021. There was little doubt that he would be taken into custody by the Russian authorities in trumped-up charges that would lead to his imprisonment. Navalny, who possessed a robust sense of humor, asked reporters on the plane back from Berlin: “What bad things can happen to me inside Russia?” He also said more soberly, “It was never a question of whether to return or not simply because I never left. I ended up in Germany after arriving in an intensive care unit for one reason: They tried to kill me.”

When Navalny kissed his wife Yulia upon his arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, it would be the last time they ever embraced. An initial three-year prison sentence would eventually expand to three decades—often in isolation and facing torture and abuse—as Putin’s courts kept finding new ways to keep him in jail and minimize his threat to the fearful dictator who rules Russia.

Navalny himself explained the fallacy of Putin’s desire to eradicate the impact of the rival who exposed the truth of his supposed popularity and absolute power: “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong,” he said in the 2022 Oscar-winning documentary about him. “We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

President Joe Biden was one of many world leaders who decried the heart-breaking death of Alexei Navalny. While acknowledging the exact circumstances of his death remain uncertain, he said in a televised address from the White House Friday, “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. Nobody should be fooled.” And more: “God bless Alexei Navalny. His courage will not be forgotten.”

Biden also took this moment to assail the failure of Republicans—who departed Washington for two weeks—to confront Putin’s brutality in Ukraine with additional funding. “The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten,” he said. “It’s going to go down in the pages of history. It really is. It’s consequential. And the clock is ticking.”

Of course, Biden’s leading challenger for the White House had nothing to say about the death of Navalny, just as he has sought to undermine support for Ukraine and American opposition to Vladimir Putin. Not only have we heard him sickeningly insist in recent days that he’d let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” with NATO countries that refuse to spend more money on defense, he has taken every opportunity to praise Putin and—as we saw in the Helsinki summit with Putin in 2018—reject American intelligence and betray America. Remember that after Putin invaded Ukraine two years ago, Trump called him “a guy who is very savvy” and the invasion “genius.” Let’s also not forget that Trump yearns to regain power to seek retribution against political rivals who he calls vermin and who he blames for his legal troubles.

As we reflect on the courage of Alexei Navalny, whose love of country was so deep that he returned to Russia despite the probability that it would lead to his death, let’s also consider the cowardice of a growing faction of Republicans emulating Trump’s love for strongman Putin and romance with Russia. (This of course includes the craven, attention-seeking TV personality Tucker Carlson, who conducted a softball interview with Putin last week and extolled the virtues of Russian life.) Note the insight of The Atlantic’s Anna Applebaum in an NPR interview last week:

“This is now a party that is profoundly critical of the United States. It doesn't like the diverse society that we've become. It doesn't like immigration. It doesn't like the kind of national conversation we have. And ironically, like the left of a previous generation, they've imagined that a better, ideal version of our society exists in Russia—a kind of white, Christian nation, you know, unified beneath a single leader without all this messy, ugly democracy and all these different kinds of people.”

In the months ahead, let’s hold onto the inspiring memory and words of Navalny, whose commitment to a better Russia released from a tyrant’s grip motivated him to sacrifice his own life. Yes, he was talking about Russia, but his words speak to our own challenges: “We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes.”

To not give up, no matter the scale of danger.

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