The funeral of Alexei Navalny, attended by thousands, was taken by optimists as a revival of Russian protest. The fact itself is seen as almost a victory over the regime. They could have buried them in their own way, secretly. They could have slashed with a razor… However, they allowed it, which means they were scared.
Less than a month passed before the amazingly dull hope for elections with Nadezhdin flared up. Now, with the death of Navalny, the soothing illusions of “peaceful protest” are being revived. Maxim Katz helpfully jumps onto the air and sensitively recalls how systematic and careful Alexey was, how he fought only according to the law and for fun and relied on hipsters with dyed hair, and not on criminals with machine guns. Not some Prigozhin… (snatching a couple of regions a day). He convinces them not to scare people as if they are resisting absolute evil – after all, absolute evil, according to Katz, is invincible. Would a reasonable person dare to fight such a thing? Not some kind of fanatics… (who have already stopped the evil in Ukraine).
Such reasoning, if you think about it, insults Navalny’s memory. But something worse is that Katz is right in his own way. Maybe not the deceased leader himself, but his movement was something like this. That’s why it ended like that. That’s right – it’s over. It is meaningless (if not harsher) to talk about the “exclusive moral right” of Navalny’s team to lead the Russian opposition (even if we assume that the opposition and the team still exist). Also, about the leadership of the widow – with all the sympathy and respect for Yulia Borisovna, there are no signs of a wartime leader behind her. Alexey Anatolyevich did not become such a leader during the ten years of war. Exactly – ten, not two. Otherwise, he would have relied on other youths – with Molotov and red-black (or black-green) banners. This gave him a chance and turned his fate differently. The chance was not taken. But he clearly understood a lot. And it’s not a fact that I would accept Katsov’s praise now.
If the image of Navalny is fixed as “systemic and law-abiding”, if political emigrants and internal dissenters are again led to the voids of the past decade, this effect will be useful to the Kremlin. If only by the fact that it will draw potential reinforcements away from the only real Russian opposition – armed formations on the Ukrainian front and partisan groups in the Russian underground. For this, it was worth playing with Nadezhdin and even allowing the funeral. Will the circle of shame, which is called with comical aplomb “we did everything we could”, be repeated? Hardly. Many people have still learned a lot. Let’s talk frankly. In the strategy and tactics of the old Russian opposition, most likely, nothing will change even after Putin’s assassination, its de facto leader. A completely different level of political thinking is needed.
Anti-Putin information front
