AS THE world outside Russia continues to be shocked by the unswerving support given to President Putin by Patriarch Kirill, it is encouraging to know that President Putin’s main opponent, the courageous Alexei Navalny, was strengthened by his membership of the Orthodox Church, which he entered as an adult, having previously been an atheist.
Navalny grew up under Communism in an army family, and was appalled by the lies and more lies under which the country had to live. When Mr Putin came to power, it was not just the lies that enraged Navalny, but the massive corruption of both President Putin himself and his cronies. After training as a lawyer, Navalny founded an anti-corruption organisation, which exposed their vast wealth; and he also stood for election as Mayor of Moscow. Despite everything that the regime did to hinder him, he managed 22.7 per cent of the vote. He was, however, barred from standing in the 2018 presidential election.
But he really hit the world headlines in August 2020, when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok (Comment, 29 January 2021). Flown to Germany for treatment, he miraculously emerged from a long coma and resumed his activities. He returned to Russia, knowing that it would mean endless arrests, imprisonments, and his likely death. He was sent to ever harsher prisons and, finally, to one in the Arctic Circle, where he died.
Angela Merkel had visited Navalny when he received treatment in Germany. In her recently published memoirs, Freedom (Books, 17 January), she wrote: “Navalny returned to Russia, only to be arrested at the airport. What followed was a three-year martyrdom. On Feb 16 2024 Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison camp, a victim of the repressive state power of his home country.”
NAVALNY kept a prison diary — Alexei Navalny: Patriot* — for those last years, and they reveal the portrait of an extraordinary spirit. He refused to be broken by the system, and continually argued back to his guards, but all the time with an amazing sense of humour and confidence. Despite all the attempts to isolate and humiliate him, he retained a sense of élan, confident that the truth would eventually win through.
There are many nice touches of humour, as, for example, when he echoes Kant in saying that there are two things in life that matter: the starry skies above, and the moral imperative within; but then he adds a third, passing his hand over his bald head.
What was the secret of this spirit? Clearly, he was born with a sense of chutzpah, for even at school he was the pupil who cheekily answered back. He was also wonderfully supported by his lovely wife, Yulia, who shared his ideas and was willing to suffer with, and as a result of, his activities. He also found meditation a great help in calming his impulsive temper. But what emerges from the diary is how much his discovery of the Christian faith sustained him through his ordeals. This began with the birth of the couple’s first child, Dasha, in 2001.
“Having a child changed my life in an unexpected way. . . Like anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I had never believed in God, but looking now at Dasha and how she was developing, I could not reconcile myself to the thought that this was only a matter of biology. . . From a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I gradually became a religious person.”
EVEN during his time in prison, Navalny fasted in Lent, and had to face the absurdity that the bread that he himself was not eating could not be given to another prisoner and had to be thrown away. During this time, he learned the Beatitudes by heart — not only in Russian, but in English, French, and Latin as well. One of the Beatitudes, in particular, was crucially important to him: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled.”
In his final appeal to the judge in one case, he makes this central. Despite his position as a prisoner, he tells the judge that he finds some satisfaction and fulfilment in trying to make that Beatitude his own, and he argues that, deep down, this is what the Russian people want. In the end, righteousness will prevail over the deeply unrighteous Russian state. Truth will out, and will win through.
THIS faith undergirded Navalny’s natural courage, and gave him the nice mixture of self-deprecation and irony which is so characteristic of his personality. The Beatitude was true, because he did, indeed, find himself genuinely fulfilled in what he was doing. In an entry for 22 March 2022, but which forms an epilogue to the diary, he says that he lies, looking up and asking himself whether he is a Christian in his heart of hearts. He suggests, with some ambiguity, that some of what passes for religion may not be necessary, but then adds: “My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. . . As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.”
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford.
*The Bodley Head, £25 (Church Times Bookshop £22.50); 978-1-84792-703-3
