Navalny - a modern day Jeremiah?

Written by TR Johns

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In 2013 Navalny was found guilty of embezzling 16 million roubles from a timber firm in Kirov, four years earlier, and sentenced to 6 years in prison. He appealed and in 2017 the verdict was sent for retrial after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found the ruling ‘unreasonable and arbitrary’ with procedural violations. The conviction was nonetheless upheld by the Russian Supreme Court, with a five-year suspended sentence given, preventing him from standing for the presidential elections in 2018.[i]

In October 2013 he and his brother Oleg had also been charged in the Yves Rocher fraud case[ii] and in 2014 a further series of lawsuits were brought against him by State officials.[iii]  Collectively these cases were seen as the Kremlin’s attempt to silence and discredit him and dissuade him and the family from political activity.

In 2020, flying from Tomsk to Moscow, he survived an attempt on his life, through Novichok nerve agent poisoning. After being treated in Germany and exposing his assailants as FSB agents, through the Bellingcat investigation[iv], he returned to Russia to continue his campaign against Government corruption, championing injustice and arguing for economic improvements with a fairer distribution of national wealth. Immediately he was re-arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

The European Council raised concerns about detention violations and his degrading penal colony treatment including sleep deprivation, repeated strip searches and failure to provide essential health care[v]. The Russian State in its defiance of international pressure extended Navalny’s sentence to 9 years for fraud and contempt of court and in August 2023, to 19 years on ‘extremism-related’ charges![vi] He died in custody in February 2024.

Trapped in a system which operates with such impunity and knowing that less than 1% of Russian court cases end in ‘not-guilty’ verdicts, Navalny found ways to continue to share his message and speak openly and courageously for his cause.

The 2013 court proceedings were live-streamed on the internet, so he delivered a direct response to the prosecutor’s closing arguments. “… I state now that I and my colleagues will do everything possible to destroy… the system of power under which 83 percent of national wealth belongs to 0.5 percent of the population.”

He used irony and good humour, despite his conditions, stating that being tried in Kirov was apposite since “the world of fantasy and fairy tales (of his oppressors) does not exist”. The region has seen “15 years of enormous oil and gas revenues”, but what benefit had the population gained? “Has anyone received access to better medical care or education? To new apartments?”

He asked of all within the courtroom, on both sides: “What have we gained? Nothing... You all know the one product that since Soviet times has become more affordable: vodka. This is why the only thing that is guaranteed to all of us, citizens of this country, is the degradation and the chance of drinking ourselves to death.”

He stated that, “if somebody thinks that having heard the threat of the six-year imprisonment I would run away abroad or hide somewhere, they are mistaken. I cannot run away from myself. I have nothing else but this… to help my country. To work for my compatriots… no one of us has the right to neutrality. No one has the right to evade the work aimed at making our world better.”[vii]  He took a similar line in returning from Germany in 2021, when he could have represented opposition in exile.

As a child, brought up near Chernobyl, Navalny had been secretly baptised by his grandmother. In the closing remarks of his Moscow 2021 trial, he chose to speak about “God and salvation” [viii]. “The fact is that I am a Christian”, which set him up for ridicule, even in his own Anti-Corruption Foundation, where most were atheists. “I was once quite a militant atheist myself. But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities… because there is a book (the Bible) in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying.”

He went on to explain how inspired he was by Jesus’s teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied’.[ix] “I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction for action. And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back… I feel a real kind of satisfaction.”

Despite intimidation, isolation and suffering at the hands of a puppet judiciary[x], his faith gave him the courage to put his own life at risk for the sake of others. He literally hungered for right, choosing a hunger strike to get the world’s attention (April 2021) and believing that ultimately truth will be victorious in his country.

He appealed to the Prosecutor and all those in authority, to “think how good life would be without the constant lies, without the deceit.”

By demonstrating incredible courage and sacrificial service in the face of intense cruelty, he ended with a message of hope. His party’s slogan ‘Russia will be free’ should be embellished with ‘Russia will be happy’ (or ‘blessed’) and will emerge from the history of unhappiness, misfortune and suffering recounted in its literature. Righteousness will prevail.

In like manner, Jeremiah prophesied that his people, after distress and deportation, would be the recipients of a new covenant, healed and restored.[xi]

Both men challenge our use of the freedoms and opportunities that we have.

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References

[i]  https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0016txs/storyville-navalny / https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb-team-of-chemical-weapon-experts-implicated-in-alexey-navalny-novichok-poisoning/# (both accessed 29-03-24) - Voluminous telecom and travel data was accessed to implicate a Federal Security Service (FSB) team of chemical weapons’ experts.

[ii] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/04/yves-rocher-rebuffs-criticism-over-role-in-navalny-affair-a72836 (accessed 29-03-24)

[iii] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/trials-and-tribulations-of-alexei-navalny/  (accessed 29-03-24)

[iv] https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=29161&lang=en - Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (accessed 30-03-24)

[v] https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/08/alexei-navalny-russian-opposition-leader-found-guilty-embezzlement (accessed 28-03-24)

[vi] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/4/russian-court-hands-jailed-alexey-navalny-new-19-year-prison-sentence  / https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/04/russian-court-extends-alexei-navalny-sentence-in-penal-colony -  (both accessed 30-03-24)

[vii] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/world/europe/text-of-navalnys-closing-remarks-in-russian-court.html (accessed 27-3-24)

[viii] https://www.rightsinrussia.org/navalny-2/ (accessed 30-03-24)

[ix] Matthew 5: 6

[x] Having set up the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011 and exposed numerous State officials, including Vladimir Putin as “the owner of that wonderful palace”, he chose, in his closing remarks at his trial in Feb. 2021, to liken Putin to “ a juggler or magician, he spins a ball first on one finger, then on another finger, then on his head, and he says, ‘Look, we can spin this judicial system on any part of our body. What can you possibly pull off against us?’”

[xi] Jeremiah 31, 32 & 38