Opinion: Navalny gave us a glimpse of what Russia could be

Editor’s Note: Emily Parker is the author of “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground.” She is a former policy adviser at the US State Department and was a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN. 

“I know how easily people are killed in Russia,” Alexey Navalny told me over a decade ago as I interviewed him for a book I was writing. “But in the end, it’s a question of choice. You can keep silent, you can emigrate, or you can stay here and fight,” the Russian democracy activist said.

Navalny — the greatest opponent to Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent memory — paid a steep price for that decision to fight. He died in a prison north of the Arctic Circle, the Russian prison service said on Friday. He was 47. At the moment, we still don’t know the details of his death. But we do know that this is a tragic end to a brave dissident who long understood that his life was at risk.

Navalny made headlines in 2020 after being poisoned with Novichok, a chemical nerve agent, and had been incarcerated since his return to Moscow from Germany in January 2021. He was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.

His death may seem to suggest that there is no future for the Russian opposition. But that is not necessarily true. Navalny provided a glimpse of what Russia could be. He accomplished what had once seemed impossible. Navalny skillfully used the internet to undermine the widespread apathy that prevented people from challenging authority. People realized that they were not alone, and that collective action could get results.

I first spoke to Navalny in 2010, when I was living in Moscow and doing research for my book about internet activism, “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are.” Back then, he was a relatively unknown lawyer and shareholder activist who blogged about corruption.

Many Russians I spoke to back then were unhappy with the political situation but didn’t see the point in street protests. After seeing a Moscow demonstration in July of that year, I understood why. Hundreds of protesters gathered in support of Article 31 of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. They were simply asserting their right to assemble and the police were just dragging some of them away.

Navalny understood that many Russians did not have an appetite for street protests, which were both dangerous and unlikely to change anything. He told me that in the 1990s, people demonstrated often and didn’t see any improvements. He said they were tired of “mass political activity.”

Navalny presented an alternative approach: online activism. “You have to propose to people the comfortable way of struggle,” he told me. Rather than going out to a risky street protest, Russians could fight corruption without leaving the house.

My book details a 2010 case in which US prosecutors said that the German carmaker company then known as Daimler, now the Mercedes-Benz Group AG, had bribed Russian officials. Navalny asked his followers to help him get a criminal investigation. He encouraged people to send petitions to the Interior Ministry and the prosecutor general’s office. He asked his followers to post messages on the website of then-President Dmitry Medvedev.

The US Justice Department released criminal complaints in March 2010 against Daimler and three subsidiaries for corruption in at least 22 countries, including Russia and China, and shortly thereafter, Russian and German subsidiaries entered agreements to plead guilty and pay criminal fines. The chair of the Daimler board said at that time, “We have learned a lot from past experience.”

Several years later, Navalny’s campaign had not led to a deluge of convictions. But he was nevertheless energized. He said that he knew of at least a thousand letters that had been submitted. He had made a dent in the public apathy that undermined political action.

Navalny’s crusade was just beginning. On his Web site, RosPil, he asked people to study public documents for signs of suspicious activity. This helped lead to the annulment of millions of dollars’ worth of government contracts.

Navalny’s campaigns showed opponents of the Kremlin that they were not alone in their fight. Before long, the results of this online activism spread to the streets. In late 2011 and early 2012, tens of thousands of Russians participated in anti-government protests that were largely organized on social media and were among the largest demonstrations since the fall of the Soviet Union. The protests clearly spooked the Kremlin. Not long after, Russia began selectively limiting internet access. In 2014, Putin passed a law against protests. In 2022, Russia banned Facebook and Instagram and restricted access to Twitter.

But Navalny’s team didn’t give up. Instead, they took their fight to YouTube. In 2021, they published a video about an investigation that alleged a secret palace had been built for Putin at a cost of more than $1 billion, but the Russian leader has denied that it belongs to him. It was the most popular video on Russian YouTube in 2021. Today, that video has close to 130 million views and nearly 2 million comments. Navalny’s team has also used the video platform to voice opposition to the war in Ukraine.

Navalny’s fame and online activism probably did help protect him for some time. He had more than two million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter and was well-known outside of Russia. His adversaries perhaps calculated that the risks of killing him outweighed the benefits, as his death could spark an international backlash and mass protests in Russia.

But the world is very different now. People in Russia have laid flowers and candles and gathered to honor Navalny, with hundreds of mourners reportedly detained. As the war in Ukraine demonstrates, the Kremlin does not seem particularly deterred by international criticism.

The internet fueled Navalny’s rise but could not save his life. Still, it had a profound effect. Navalny used the internet to fuel a resistance movement that once seemed impossible in Putin’s Russia. Navalny is gone, but his following is not. They saw, at least for a period, the power of collective action. The situation looks bleak now, but this story is not necessarily over. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, has pledged to continue to fight for opposition, making the announcement on YouTube, where the video already has millions of views.

Navalny put it best himself in the 2022 documentary, “Navalny.” “You’re not allowed to give up,” the activist said. “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”