Soviet Echoes and the Ability to Change: Reflections on the Funeral of Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny's death and funeral fit into the tradition of the Soviet dissident movement and show how his movement appears to have moved past earlier Russian-chauvinist views.

After Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024 in an Arctic prison at the far end of Russia, the authorities tried to strong-arm his mother into holding a quiet family funeral. “Because we’re afraid the morgue will be stormed” if the funeral were public, Navalny’s family was told, according to Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov. After the family insisted on their legal right to bury him as they wished, the authorities relented and allowed a public burial. 

Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have earned praise for their creative and persistent battles against Russia’s ruling party for years — from breaking into Russian TV stations and leafletting apartment entryways with anti-corruption messaging as part of the “Good Propaganda Machine” before the 2012 election; to flying drones over the walls of officials’ opulent palaces; to the Smart Voting initiative that urged citizens to back any candidate who stood a chance of defeating those of the ruling party; to Navalny’s clever phone call where he tricked a state security officer into admitting having poisoned him; to Navalny’s decision, after he recovered from the near-fatal poisoning attempt, to return to Russia in 2021 and continue the fight, knowing he would be arrested; to his refusal to let the frequent solitary confinement and other forms of psychological torture in prison break him. 

To many, Navalny is a hero, a 21st-century version of the brave dissidents of the Soviet era. A 2022 documentary about his poisoning won numerous awards. But some find it hard to forgive Navalny for statements he has made in the past, denigrating non-Russian ethnic groups and LGBT people and questioning whether the Crimean peninsula rightfully belongs to Ukraine. Navalny’s death and funeral have received extensive coverage, but the Natto Team wants to focus on two aspects: how those events fit into the tradition of the Soviet dissident movement; and how Navalny’s movement appears to have evolved from its previous Russian-chauvinist views.

Echoes of the Soviet Dissident Movement

On the eve of the March 1 funeral, Russian policemen lined the nearby streets. Navalny’s parents took the lead. His wife, children and brother remain abroad, as they would face arrest if they set foot in Russia.

The Navalny family had to search to find a church, cemetery, and hearse drivers willing to help; Moscow authorities had warned and threatened these providers not to participate. University students were told they could be expelled for attending the funeral, according to commentators on Deutsche Welle’s streaming coverage of the event.

Still, people turned out. Images showed long lines of mourners winding their way from the church to the cemetery through the gauntlet of policemen. Opposition sources reported some 16,500 in attendance . The crowds yelled “Navalny!” “No to war!” “Russia will be free!” and “Love is stronger than fear!”

Screenshot from the YouTube channel of Aleksey Navalny’s organization, March 1, 2024, 3:57 Moscow time, shows the crowds waiting to pay their respects

The sight brought to mind the hundreds of thousands of people whom Navalny and others were able to rally in 2011-2012 to demand fair elections. These massive demonstrations, and smaller ones in 2017 and 2021, have faced increasingly heavy-handed crackdowns from Putin’s government. 

Indeed, Russia of the 2020s increasingly resembles the darkest moments of Soviet political repression. During the 1940s, a careless reference to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as “the mustachioed one” catapulted writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn into the prison hell that would result in his famous memoir The Gulag Archipelago. In Putin’s Russia of 2024, a single social media posting critical of the government, or even a mute protest with a blank sheet of paper, can lead to a prison sentence.

Since the Soviet era, when the only time you could speak your mind was at the kitchen table or in typewritten samizdat essays passed from hand to hand, dissidents have taken advantage of certain traditions to express their convictions publicly. One is the use of “Aesopian language” to evade censorship, as the Natto Team has discussed. Other traditions include the use of funerals for quiet protest and the “final word” (последнее слово) or closing statement at trial.

First page of the December 31, 1969 issue of the “Chronicle of Current Events,” a Soviet dissident newsletter quietly circulated via hand-typed samizdat. Source: Wanderausstellung „Gulag. Spuren und Zeugnisse 1929–1956“ via Wikimedia Commons

Funerals: 

Russians opposed to their government’s heavy-handed rule have sometimes been able to express their grievances in the more-acceptable form of mourning the dead. Funerals — from that of War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy in 1910 to Doctor Zhivago author Boris Pasternak in 1960 — have served as “fertile ground for protest and politicization .... an opportunity to express displeasure under the ambiguous cover of mourning,” writes scholar Ani Kokobobo in an essay for Time magazine’s Made By History series.

The Russian and Soviet governments sometimes succeeded in stifling public funerals, as in 1986 when political prisoner Anatoly Marchenko died after a hunger strike. The authorities demanded he be buried far from Moscow in a deserted graveyard. “I think the situation is even worse now,” Marchenko’s son told The Guardian after Aleksei Navalny’s death. “The Soviet authorities at least needed to pretend to look humane, the current government doesn’t care at all.” Navalny himself had read the memoirs of Marchenko and other Soviet political prisoners and commented, “Prison, investigation and trial are the same now” as in the descriptions by those Soviet dissidents. Nevertheless, on March 1, 2024, thousands of people managed to leave flowers for Navalny and, however briefly, feel less alone.

Final Word:

On February 16, the very day Navalny died, a Russian court reopened the trial of 70-year-old human-rights activist Oleg Orlov for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine; a previous trial in late 2023 had resulted in a mere fine, and prosecutors had demanded a retrial. This time, on February 28 the judge sentenced him to 30 months in a prison camp. But before the sentencing Orlov was allowed to give the traditional “final word” or closing statement.  

Orlov warned that Navalny’s death and the prosecution of Orlov himself and others are “links in the same chain...the suffocation of freedom" in Russia. “In just over four months since the end of my first hearing in this court..many events have taken place that show how quickly, and how much more deeply, our country is sinking into darkness.” He added, “The government in our country not only controls all public, political, and economic life, but also aspires to exert control over culture and scientific thought … and there is no more private life either.” That sounds like the definition of totalitarianism. Indeed, in an earlier article Orlov had said Russia “is now pushed back into totalitarianism, but this time into a fascist totalitarianism.”  

Orlov’s final word urged his listeners to “remember Alexey’s appeal: ‘Don’t give up’.... The truth is on our side.” To the judge and prosecutors he said, “Are you not afraid that not only you, but also your children and, God forbid, your grandchildren, will have to live in this absurdity, this dystopia? Do you not acknowledge the obvious truth, that the repressive machine will sooner or later also flatten those who launched it and promoted it?... the punishment will definitely come. Your children or grandchildren will be ashamed to talk about the work and the deeds of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers. The same will happen to those now committing crimes in...Ukraine.”

This speech puts Orlov in a long tradition of Russian and Soviet dissidents who took advantage of their legal right to a “final word” in court before their verdict and sentencing. (Even in closed trials, a relative or lawyer would be able to attend and later share the defendant’s words with a broader group of sympathizers via samizdat). As Sovietologist Robert Sharlet explained, in these closing statements, dissidents would “put up a ‘legalist’ defense confronting the judges and prosecutors ... with a detailed and documented account of the violations of their due-process rights...The legalist defense did not win any cases for dissenters. But, in using it, political defendants succeeded repeatedly in indicting the regime and putting it ‘on trial’ in the court of Western public opinion.” (As we recall from the statement of dissident Marchenko’s son, Soviet officials cared about world opinion and would, on occasion, respond to entreaties on behalf of particular dissidents). In post-Soviet Russia as well, “The final word “is a sufficiently important right that, if a defendant has not exercised the right in a given case, the conviction will be reversed unless it appears....that the defendant affirmatively waived the right,” according to legal scholar Peter Maggs and coauthors.

Indeed, as Russian journalist Anna Narinskaya has noted, “a distinct oral/literary genre has re-emerged — the “final statement” of a defendant.   Paradoxically, the ‘cage’ in a courtroom...appears as the only remaining place where a person can still speak freely. .... the courtroom, where people are tried for dissent, is a last bastion of freedom of speech in today’s Russia.”

“Final words” like those of Orlov and the outpouring of support at Navalny’s funeral may briefly allow people to express their convictions but will not necessarily shield them from official retribution. As of March 5, 2024, Russian security services were reportedly using facial recognition to identify and arrest people who went to pay their respects to Alexei Navalny on March 1. 

Capable of Change

In spring 2023 Georgetown University invited Alexei Navalny’s daughter, Darya Navalnaya, to serve as Commencement speaker. The event reportedly set off “chaos,” as students from Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia protested the invitation because of Navalny’s past statements disparaging immigrants and gays and questioning whether Crimea rightfully belonged to Ukraine. Although Darya’s speech pointed out that her father has criticized the “unjust and horrible” war in Ukraine and has suffered for it, several students turned their backs on Navalnaya even as the rest of the audience stood to applaud.

Fast-forward to March 1, 2024 and Navalny’s funeral. A woman was caught on video shouting “Glory to the heroes,” a Ukrainian patriotic slogan. Within days, police tracked her down, detained and harassed her, and imposed a fine. Another video showed crowds of funeral-goers chanting “Ukrainians are good people!” A Ukrainian-American woman often critical of Russians admitted in a tweet, “Wow! I didn’t expect to hear this at Navalny’s funeral.”

Navalny and his followers indeed appear to have moved beyond their previous chauvinist views. In 2021, Amnesty International moved to rescind Navalny’s status as “prisoner of conscience” but then reversed that decision and apologized to him. Amnesty explained, "We recognise that an individual's opinions and behaviour may evolve over time...It is part of Amnesty's mission to encourage people to positively embrace a human rights vision and to not suggest that they are forever trapped by their past conduct." Exiled Russian writer Masha Gessen, who is herself gay, has provided context for Navalny’s statements and said his views on issues such as gay rights had changed for the better, but perhaps not publicly enough.

Navalny appears to have evolved into a firm supporter of Ukraine. In February 2023 his group issued a new program for their movement, denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and calling for defending the internationally recognized 1991 borders of Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. In a February 2023 tweet thread, Navalny acknowledged some Russians’ discontent with the idea that Crimea should belong to Ukraine, but said that did not justify violating international law. “Almost all borders in the world are more or less accidental and cause someone's discontent. But in the twenty-first century, we cannot start wars just to redraw them. ... Russia must leave Ukraine alone and allow it to develop the way its people want. Stop the aggression, end the war and withdraw all of its troops from Ukraine.” 

In the tweet thread Navalny rhetorically asked, “Are all Russians inherently imperialistic?” and answered, “This is nonsense.” He said Russia and Belarus took part in the attack on Ukraine because they are ruled by dictators.” He acknowledged some imperialist habits of thinking in Russian society but said a truly democratic political system would keep them from prevailing: “There will always be people with imperial views in Russia, just like in any other country with historical preconditions for this, but they are far from being the majority. ....Such people should be defeated in elections, just as both right-wing and left-wing radicals get defeated in developed countries. .....”

Similarly, in April 2023 dozens of famous Russian liberal opposition activists and groups in exile signed a petition unequivocally denouncing the Russian war on Ukraine. 

Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian of Eastern Europe who has been a vocal advocate for Ukraine and who features in the Natto Thoughts posting “History and Hope,” cautiously welcomed the Russian dissidents’ April 2023 declaration in support of Ukraine. Nevertheless, Snyder remained skeptical that these “liberals who have moved beyond imperialism” would gain power and be able to act on their newly enlightened views: “The clarification of their position might serve them well in the future....liberals who have moved beyond imperialism can blame the war on Putin and try to set a new course. Many things would have to fall into place for that scenario to be realized.”  

Regardless of the Navalny team’s policy change, many Ukrainians remain distrustful; “there was no outpouring of condolences” in Ukraine after Navalny’s death, as the Washington Post noted. Both Ukrainian president Zelensky’s wife and Navalny’s widow turned down invitations to US President Biden’s March 7, 2024 State of the Union speech, as it would have required them to sit near each other. Kremlin-linked “pseudo-news sites and bots” have reportedly worked hard to inflame that distrust, according to anti-disinformation group @antibot4navalny. Lingering divisions among groups of Russian liberals, within Russia and in exile, add to the challenges for Navalny’s heirs.

Dreams Deferred

The Natto Thoughts report “Russia After Putin” addresses some of the institutional and cultural challenges facing would-be democratic reformers in Russia. Hopes have been raised and dashed in other phases of Russian history. However, sometimes seeds of change have been planted, though they may take decades to germinate. Soviet-born German writer Wladimir Kaminer (featured here) compared Russia, waiting for freedom, to a snail climbing Mount Fuji.

When Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1960s, the so-called Thaw atmosphere encouraged thinkers and writers to explore the truths of their own past and envision a renewed socialist society. One intellectual who took advantage of the Thaw was agrarian historian Viktor Petrovich Danilov, who wrote about how Joseph Stalin’s Soviet leadership had brutally forced peasants onto collective farms at the turn of the 1930s. Six days after the page proofs of Danilov’s book went to the publisher in 1964, Khrushchev was ousted. During the subsequent crackdown under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Professor Danilov found himself in disgrace and unable to travel; most of his writings were consigned to the desk drawer. But Danilov managed to publish document collections that made it past the censors and landed in libraries worldwide. There, foreign historians drew on these materials to write histories of collectivization. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Danilov worked with Western historians to publish fuller archival documents in Russian and English.

In addition, it was during the Thaw that the Soviet dissident movement was born.

Finally, within the Soviet establishment itself, the Thaw era infected a young student named Mikhail Gorbachev with the idea of renewing and reforming Soviet socialism. A generation later, he would come to power, loosen censorship and central controls, make arms-control agreements with the West, refuse to order the crushing of liberation movements in Eastern Europe, and acquiesce to the ending of the Soviet empire. 

Navalny’s death has left liberal-minded Russians seeking slivers of hope for their country’s future. The mourners at his funeral said they felt for a moment that they were not alone. Sasha Vasilyuk, a Russian/Ukrainian/American author, tweeted on that day, “Navalny’s death left me without hope, I wrote for @CNNOpinion. But seeing people gather to pay respects and even talk to foreign reporters means small acts of courage are still possible.”

These modern-day dissidents, as well as people in societies at risk of sliding into dictatorship. can learn from the experience of Soviet dissidents. Historian Timothy Snyder has drawn on this history in summarizing recommendations for resisting and surviving tyranny.