Navalny summary

For nearly two decades, Russia has been thoroughly dominated by one man – Vladimir Putin. Yet, despite Putin’s iron grip on power, a new politician has proved to be a looming threat to Russia's current political order. His name is Alexei Navalny.

These blinks delve into the life and politics of Navalny, Russia’s most prominent political activist and opposition leader. You’ll learn how Navalny got his start spearheading anti-corruption investigations and parlayed his growing influence into a new political party, Russia of the Future. You’ll also learn how Navalny plans to change Russia, and what Putin has done to stymie his efforts. 

In these blinks, you’ll learn:

• what makes LiveJournal a political platform;
• how to disrupt a shareholder meeting; and
• why it’s so tough being a Russian politician.

It’s April 2008, and Navalny is causing a scene. He’s at the annual shareholder meeting for Surgetneftegaz, one of Russia’s largest and most profitable oil companies. While these meetings are usually quiet, formal affairs, Navalny isn’t afraid to break decorum.

When Surgetneftegaz’s CEO Vladimir Bogdanov takes the stage, Navalny begins peppering him with questions. He wants to know who actually owns Surgetneftegaz, why such a profitable company pays so little in dividends, and why the organization makes its annual report so vague and difficult to access.

During the interrogation, the crowd grumbles and shifts uncomfortably in their seats. However, Navalny’s performance isn’t for them. Later, he’ll post about the meeting online, where he’s slowly earning a following.

Here’s the key message: Navalny used his wealth to launch a vast anti-corruption campaign. 

After the fall of the USSR, Russia's transition to a free market economy was rocky. Much of the Union’s publicly owned assets fell into private hands, and a small group of super-rich individuals, known as oligarchs, gained massive political influence. This dynamic has continued under Putin, as business leaders often collaborate with state officials to enrich themselves through bribes, embezzlement, and other practices. 

Navalny’s career as an anti-corruption activist began in 2006 with so-called shareholder activism. Essentially, Navalny leveraged his wealth to buy minority shares in large companies like Surgetneftegaz. This ownership gave him access to insider information and the authority to ask intrusive questions about company finances. In this way, Navalny would root out suspicious details and post them on his LiveJournal blog.

He scored a major victory in 2010. Using leaked documents, Navalny found that Transneft, a major oil company, had mysteriously lost $4 billion when constructing the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline. The allegations kicked off a major government investigation. While the inquiry was eventually sidelined with little resolution, it nonetheless made elite corruption a major topic in Russian media discourse.

Soon, Navalny made his crusade against corruption his major focus. In February 2012, he consolidated his various activist projects into the Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK. This organization raises funds to investigate issues like suspicious government contracting and election fraud. It also produces wildly popular YouTube videos detailing how corruption funnels wealth to the country’s elite while leaving the many behind. Of course, this work also earned Navalny many enemies in high places.

Navalny was always keenly interested in politics. As a teen, he voraciously read political theorists like Voltaire and avidly followed the news as leaders like Boris Yeltsin jockeyed for power in the post-Soviet World. By the age of 40, Navalny’s political passions had only grown. In fact, by 2016, he had decided to run for his country’s highest office.

Navalny’s presidential campaign began in late 2016. He announced his candidacy in a slick YouTube video, talking about pressing issues like inequality, taxes, foreign policy, and, of course, corruption. Over the next year, he pushed hard to gain a foothold in Russia’s difficult electoral system. However, in 2017 the Kremlin barred him from the race, citing flimsy legal issues stemming from controversial embezzlement charges.

Despite that campaign's stalled outcome, Navalny’s political future remains an open question even today.

The key message is this: Throughout his uneven political career, Navalny has sought to unseat Russia’s ruling party.

Navalny’s idiosyncratic political trajectory suits Russia’s unique political landscape. As a college student, Navalny enthusiastically welcomed capitalist reforms to the Soviet system. Then, after building a business career, he joined Yabloko, a small, left-leaning party. While Navalny quickly rose to power within Yabloko, the party itself failed to gain much influence on the national stage.

In the mid-2000s, Navalny, like many Russians at the time, drifted toward nationalism. He left Yabloko to found the Russian National Movement of Liberation, or NAROD. NAROD blended liberal economic policies with conservative stances on immigration and Russian identity. While this organization ultimately folded, Navalny is still associated with nationalist views.

As Navalny’s anti-corruption activities took off, so did his political career. Through his blog and other media outlets, he openly criticized the ruling United Russia party as “a party of crooks and thieves.” In the 2011 national legislative elections, he began advocating for so-called Smart Voting, a system in which people strategically vote for any party best-positioned to weaken United Russia. When Putin’s party ultimately won anyway, Navalny went on to lead a series of protests in Moscow, and ran for mayor of the city – an election he lost.

Undeterred, Navalny continued his activism and regrouped to run for president in 2018. While Russia’s opaque electoral system made unseating Putin unlikely, Navalny hoped the campaign would weaken the ruling party. Unfortunately, a series of embezzlement charges – denounced by the European Court of Human Rights as flimsy and politically motivated – forced him out of the race. To continue his work, Navalny would have to embrace an alternate identity as a protester.

On paper, Russia is a democracy. The state regularly holds open elections, and many different political parties can put up candidates. However, in practice, the country falls short of these democratic practices – despite the alternatives on the ballot, the ruling party always wins when it counts. 

Given these stifling conditions, those seeking change have to look for avenues of influence beyond elections, such as public protests. While demonstrations face their own difficulties, they allow opposing views to gain a little recognition.

So, as Navalny was pushed out of formal politics, he increasingly picked up protest as his political tool of choice. In recent years, it’s proved to be a shrewd and effective decision. 

This is the key message: Navalny grew his movement into a lively activist and protest network.

Navalny was never a stranger to protesting. In the wake of the 2011 elections, he joined an unauthorized demonstration challenging the outcome, which had given an unusually large majority to Putin’s United Russia party. Afterward, he and 300 other protesters were detained by police for weeks. Upon release, he immediately joined another demonstration. This time, he gave a speech denouncing the Kremlin’s undemocratic actions.

Later, when Navalny launched his presidential campaign, he expected resistance. Working with his trusted political adviser Leonid Volkov, he crafted a detailed strategy to keep supporters engaged if the campaign failed. Using a combination of social media boosterism and large public rallies in more than 90 cities, the two created a highly coordinated opposition movement that pushed normally apathetic people into the streets all across the country.

One reason this movement became such a success was Navalny’s strategic outreach to regions and localities all around Russia. The campaign dedicated resources to opening offices wherever possible, and made efforts to connect with local organizers and activist groups already at work in each area. When government officials tried to hamper the movement by denying its protest permits, these seasoned organizers could help set up rallies and meetings in private locations. 

Navalny’s activist base also sought out support beyond the wealthy and educated youth who normally make up progressive movements. They actively engaged with workers, retirees, and other, more marginalized groups. When Navalny was eventually detained by police in 2021, his supporters were ready – thousands took to the streets to protest his imprisonment. 

Winter in Russia is particularly harsh – the sun sets early, and temperatures hover at or below freezing in most major cities. However, despite these frigid conditions, nearly 200,000 people took to the streets in January and February of 2021. They were there to protest Navalny’s detention. 

Back in 2020, Navalny had been mysteriously poisoned. After recovering in Germany, the politician and activist returned to Russia, where authorities detained him for violating the conditions of his parole stemming from the previous charges of embezzlement. Unsurprisingly, his many supporters were outraged.

But was Putin shaken by this display of support? It’s unclear. While the president’s press secretary denied that Navalny was any threat to the system, the Kremlin nonetheless seems keen to suppress his movement. 

The key message here is: Putin’s party actively works to keep opposition like Navalny from power.

Since the elections of 2011, Putin and his United Russia party have enjoyed near-total control of the Russian government. However, their stable handle on power belies a constant struggle below the surface. Rather than resting comfortably, the ruling party is constantly working to solidify its hold on the state, the media, and public sentiment. Undermining Navalny is part of this larger political project.

One way United Russia remains strong is by venerating its leader, Vladimir Putin. The party regularly stages pro-Putin rallies and press events in schools, workplaces, and other public spaces. These events are designed to present the president as a strong, caring leader who protects the Russian people against the encroachment of Western Europe. Maintaining this image makes any opposition, including Navalny, seem unpatriotic and suspect.

Putin’s administration also goes to great lengths to hinder the media or investigators from distributing any unfavorable information. In July 2017, the government passed a new law that allowed state agencies to selectively classify data on any top-level government official. The legislation aimed to severely hamper the work of anti-corruption investigators like Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, FBK. The state has also made efforts to monitor and track internet traffic closely, allowing it to identify and combat any anti-Putin narratives as they emerge.

Finally, the Kremlin has taken aim at the democratic system itself. While the country still holds elections, the state has made it harder and harder to participate. For instance, in 2019, when Navalny and allies attempted to run candidates for Moscow City Council, the government prevented any of these challengers from appearing on the ballot. With formal elections off the table, the only recourse for unsatisfied citizens looking to express their anger has become more disruptive action. 

February 2, 2021. Navalny is once again in court. After being detained at the airport in Moscow, he is charged with violating the conditions of his parole – he was supposed to check in with parole officers twice a month, yet failed to do so while hospitalized in Berlin after having been poisoned.

Of course, these trumped-up charges aren’t the real reason Navalny is in trouble. According to his supporters, he’s being punished for resisting Putin’s regime and having the audacity to survive an assassination attempt.

Either way, the charges stick, and Navalny is sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. As of September 2021, he remains in a corrective labor colony in Pokrov, Vladimir Region. His future and his legacy remain uncertain.

Here’s the key message: Navalny remains in prison, but his political movement will continue.

Navalny’s time in prison has not gone smoothly. He’s been subject to constant reprimands for petty offenses – for instance, he’s caught flak for dressing casually in a T-shirt when meeting his lawyer, and been punished for addressing a guard too casually. He’s also been deemed an “escape risk,” allowing guards to wake him every hour throughout the night. Ever the protester, Navalny began a hunger strike in March, but ended it in late April without winning any concessions.

Outside of prison, the Russian state is working to dismantle Navalny’s entire political organization. In the wake of his sentencing, police arrested all the top officials at FBK and the heads of every regional office in Navalny’s political network. As if that weren’t enough, in April 2021, the state declared FBK an “extremist organization.” This designation makes it illegal to donate to the organization, and puts FBK employees at risk of imprisonment.

So where does Navalny’s legacy stand? Well, in some ways, his accomplishments are meager – his best political outing was a second-place finish in the 2013 Moscow mayoral race. While more than 75 percent of Russians recognize him by name, polls indicate that only about 19 percent enthusiastically support his activities. 

However, Navalny’s real victories may be more subtle. His long career as an anti-corruption activist, politician, and protest leader has highlighted the structural problems within Russia, and brought attention to the country’s authoritarian practices. And his advocacy for Smart Voting may yet undermine the electoral power of Russia United. Though perhaps Navalny’s biggest achievement is symbolic – through his activism, he’s inspired a whole new generation of Russians to reach for the reins of power. They may soon steer Russia to a better future.