Alexei Navalny - A Man and His Documentary

 I'd anticipated some lighter subjects for this blog before I woke yesterday morning and read the news about Alexei Navalny's death. When I first read it, I doubted it, dismissing it as Twitter doggerel and nothing more. That is, until respected historians like Simon Sebag Montefiore and Peter Frankopan started sharing it and commenting on it. Then people like Clarissa Ward and Anne Applebaum chimed in as well. It was in disbelief I read the varying attempts at hagiography, watched the prison video taken, apparently, only the previous day. This was a day I always knew was coming, and knew that it would come sooner rather than later. I just didn't think it would be today.

I won't pretend that my freedom is under attack or that the situations that Alexei Navalny protested in any way resemble anything that I have gone through. I'm writing this in front of a TV in Dublin, Ireland. I'm not knee-deep in repression in Vladivostok or anything like that. The work of Alexei Navalny never directly impacted my day-to-day life, for better or for worse. But a man who takes on a Byzantine, feudal government, with a herostratic man like Vladimir Putin at its helm, is always expecting to die and yet perseveres nevertheless. I think there's something in this pursuit for us all to take away from the man and his story.

I only became truly aware of Alexei Navalny and his story, after reading about him in this magnificent article from TIME Magazine, from the utterly superb documentary that came out in 2022 bearing his surname. I caught it at the Irish Film Institute, walking in off the streets because none of my friends had finished up university exams like I had and this was the only film showing at 3pm on a Tuesday. I'm forever thankful that I walked in that day and paid the seven or eight quid I was charged. I sat down for a thriller, a documentary, a heart-breaking love story and a political manifesto, all in one. 

It tells the story of Navalny searching for the truth about the attempted poisoning of him in Siberia in August 2020. Helped by his Anti-Corruption Foundation and a journalist from Bellingcat, he ends up in one of the most cartoonish situations ever filmed: talking to one of the men who attempted to kill him and getting him to detail how exactly it was done, where it failed etc. I laughed in the cinema when I first watched this, and I laughed once more when I rewatched the film last night. Clarissa Ward said on-air for CNN at the time that "if this were a Hollywood movie, you would say it was over the top". The truth, it proves, is stranger than fiction.

The film brilliantly constructs Navalny's personal story with that of the Russia against whom he fought so valiantly. It doesn't shy away from the tougher questions about his past, questions that will no doubt be raised once more now that he has passed away. When asked about his racist comments in the past, or aligning himself in the past with ardent Russian nationalists, Navalny owns his words and accepts that what he did wasn't what he would have wanted to do in a perfect world. When faced with an authoritarian government and despotic leader, his argument is that you don't have much choice who you side with if you're the opposition. I can't help but agree with him there, on a fundamental level at least.

The film has many powerful moments, but the best are when Navalny is face-to-face with the director and answers everything honestly, thoughtfully, diligently. He himself is an open book for us.

Rewatching the film last night broke my heart because of how funny I found him to be. He had a notoriously wicked sense of humour and it shows time and time again, even in the tougher moments of the film. Filming TikToks with his daughter with photos of the guys who tried to murder him, one can't help but laugh at the absurdity of such a situation. He is asked about what differentiates President Navalny from President Putin, and he basically just says that as long as he's not as autocratic as his predecessor, he's fine. I think that's, again, a pretty funny response. He is acutely aware of the problem he is facing, rather ominously remarking at one point in the film:

"Murder is a terrific way to solve a problem. But once you have started the killing, it's hard to stop"

One can't help but imagine now what Navalny's Russia would have looked like. The question of 'Russia after Putin' is one being asked more and more in the press as the world he has for himself built cannot seemingly exist without someone of his intellect at the top to lead it. I don't know whether Navalny's Russia would have drastically changed the country. I'm not immensely passionate about Russian history, nor do I have the yearning desire to travel to the country at any point in my life. But a Navalny Russia would have, at least, shown the world that standing for what is right does work out. The powers of truth and love could have, at the very least, prevailed.

Navalny's daughter talks of him missing her graduation while he's imprisoned "for doing the right thing". My latest viewing of this film is informed, naturally, by what's just happened and one cannot help but be overcome by the emotional power of this film, its characters and its story. Navalny, in the words of one old bitty waiting for him at the airport in Moscow, is "now the symbol of Russia's freedom". The freedom of one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world rested on the totemic shoulders of one lawyer who believes in an absolute right and wrong. This very belief in an absolute right and wrong, that "truth is on my side and so is the law", is what has had him murdered. He was the Voldemort of Russian state television for the last few years, often basically called He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, called "that patient in the Berlin clinic" in this film by Putin, the telecritics afraid of naming the very man who could see to it that them and their regime be toppled. Whilst the venom races through their veins, Navalny was guided by little more than the overbearing power of love. Love for the truth. Love for his family. Love for his country.

I rarely well up or cry when I watch films. Films are, for me, an escape from a world that is increasingly doing its best to get one up on me. But I found myself in floods of tears, well, relative floods of tears, when Navalny is arrested in Moscow and shares one kiss with his wife, a kiss that I presume now was the last she would ever share with her husband. Yulia Navalnaya, best detailed here,  is an exceptional woman who has dealt with unimaginable grief, only compounded even more by yesterday's reports. Alexei draws a heart onto the window of his box in the court room while looking longingly at his wife. In spite of all that faces him, and all that is to face him, nothing for him is more powerful than the force of love. The images would draw tears from a stone.

God only knows what will happen over the next few days, weeks, months, years. With his death only confirmed by the prison services at the time of writing, will the very truth of his mortality soon emerge? Will a revolution spiral in Russia in the wake of his death? Will Putin and his regime crumble? Will Putin crush more dissent and further alleviate any chances of Russia being a free country? I have no answers to any of these questions, nor will I attempt anything reminiscent of a guess at them either. Instead, I'll leave the message Navalny leaves at the end of his film, verbatim. He's asked what message he should leave for people in case he were to die sometime in the near future. You may not have thought you would go to war for this man before. Think again.

"My message for the situation that I am killed is very simple: Not give up. Listen, I've got something very obvious to tell to you. You're not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilise this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don't realise how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don't do nothing."

Requiescat in pace, Alexei.