AS THE world outside Russia continues to be shocked by the unswerving support given to President Putin by Patriarch Kirill, it’s encouraging to know that President Putin’s most important 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 a military family, and was appalled by the lies and more lies under which the country needed to live. When Mr Putin got here to power, it was not only the lies that enraged Navalny, but the huge corruption of each 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 every thing that the regime did to hinder him, he managed 22.7 per cent of the vote. He was, nonetheless, barred from standing within 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 protracted coma and resumed his activities. He returned to Russia, knowing that it might mean infinite arrests, imprisonments, and his likely death. He was sent to ever harsher prisons and, finally, to at least one within 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 on 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 jail diary — Alexei Navalny: Patriot* — for those last years, they usually reveal the portrait of a rare spirit. He refused to be broken by the system, and continually argued back to his guards, but on a regular basis with an incredible sense of humour and confidence. Despite all of the attempts to isolate and humiliate him, he retained a way of élan, confident that the reality would eventually win through.
There are many nice touches of humour, as, for instance, when he echoes Kant in saying that there are two things in life that matter: the starry skies above, and the moral imperative inside; but then he adds a 3rd, passing his hand over his bald head.
What was the key of this spirit? Clearly, he was born with a way of chutzpah, for even in school he was the pupil who cheekily answered back. He was also splendidly supported by his lovely wife, Yulia, who shared his ideas and was willing to suffer with, and because of this of, his activities. He also found meditation a terrific assist 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 baby modified my life in an unexpected way. . . Like anyone who grew up within the Soviet Union, I had never believed in God, but looking now at Dasha and the way she was developing, I couldn’t reconcile myself to the thought that this was only a matter of biology. . . From a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I progressively became a non secular person.”
EVEN during his time in prison, Navalny fasted in Lent, and needed to face the absurdity that the bread that he himself was not eating couldn’t be given to a different prisoner and needed 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, specifically, was crucially essential to him: “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled.”
In his final appeal to the judge in a single case, he makes this central. Despite his position as a prisoner, he tells the judge that he finds some satisfaction and fulfilment in attempting to make that Beatitude his own, and he argues that, deep down, that is what the Russian people want. In the top, righteousness will prevail over the deeply unrighteous Russian state. Truth will out, and can win through.
THIS faith undergirded Navalny’s natural courage, and gave him the good 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’s a Christian in his heart of hearts. He suggests, with some ambiguity, that a few of what passes for religion might not be obligatory, but then adds: “My job is to hunt the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to Jesus and the remainder of his family to cope with every thing else. . . As they are saying in prison here: they may 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
