The Courageous Death Of Authentic Alexei

The Psychological Forces Driving Alexei A. Navalny to the End (Vol. 4; Issue 8)

Responding to last week’s newsletter, devoted reader Mona, who asks me to elaborate upon authenticity, writes:

Right on about Super Bowl, Valentine's Day, and any of the other made up holidays designed to usher us into our false self comfort zone, complying like zombies.

Indeed, endless cultural forces, invading our minds via omnipresent digital screens, impose zombie-like compliance. I will answer Mona’s request, including her wish to hear about why Heidegger thinks facing the reality of death is a requirement for authentic living, soon. I delay that planned issue because of, coincidentally, a death. One of the least zombie-like persons on the planet Earth, Russian activist and lawyer Alexei A. Navalny, died on February 16, 2024.

Mr. Navalny spent his last days in a remote, icy Russian prison inside the Arctic Circle. I’ve followed his life with envy, fascination, and admiration for years. As I compose this week’s newsletter, I feel tremendous sadness. My vision is blurred by tears. Who knows what Navalny was truly like? Only close family and friends understand. And, even then, and even if he was an introspective person, how much could anyone really know about him—given identity’s elusive nature? Nonetheless, information in the public sphere suggests a real life freedom fighter, a passionate person willing to sacrifice his life in pursuit of truth and justice.

Mr. Navalny was born on June 4, 1976 in a suburb of Moscow. His liberal parents quietly opposed Soviet rule—quietly because overt dissent led to torture, imprisonment, or death. The rapidly changing political and societal Russian scene formed the context for Navalny’s childhood and adolescent years. He grew up as the Soviet system gasped its last breaths. Its massive inefficiencies, increasingly evident to the Russian people, led to its collapse in 1991. The chaos and corruption of its endpoint spread like malignant cancer for nearly a decade afterwards. A few subsequent leaders, most notably the notorious alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, attempted to transition Russia into a democracy. The project abjectly failed.

Russian anthropologist Alexei Yurchak (2005), a professor at UC Berkeley, introduced the word hypernormalization* to describe how Russian people coped as incompetent communism morphed into savage capitalism. Even in the 1970s and 1980s, Russians knew the Soviet system was failing. But no one could imagine an alternative. The Russian people have known nothing but autocracy for centuries. Russia was ruled by Tsars from 1547 to 1917, the year of the communist revolution. After a brilliant beginning with increased rights for women and minorities, communism’s own failures became dominant.

After nine years of pandemonium, Yeltsin resigned as president. It was the end of 1999. The then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, became Acting President in 2000. Meanwhile, state-owned enterprises were put up for sale at ridiculously low prices. These were gifted to friends of Yeltsin and Putin, making them billionaires. Putin accelerated the privatization, again using discounted sales or gifts of immense industries, including natural gas and petrochemical companies, to his cronies. Karen Dawisha (2014) refers to Putin’s government as a kleptocracy, meaning rule by thieves. Per usual, the common people suffered.

Mr. Navalny began blogging about Russian politics in his early 20s, around the time Putin took control. His writings critiqued the rampant, corrosive corruption. Early in his rule, Putin had other priorities. But it was not long before he became aware of Mr. Navalny. Within a few years, Putin eliminated all political opposition. He subsequently hardened his authoritarian rule, year by year, culminating in his total control of the the media all the way through his “special military operation” in Ukraine. In truth, that illegal incursion is the result of Putin’s invasion of a sovereign nation on February 24, 2022.

Mr. Navalny likely enjoyed the typical omnipotence of masculine youth—angry, idealistic, and testosterone-charged. Carl Jung (1972), in one of his many departures from Sigmund Freud, considered the unconscious mind a source of as many gifts as traumas. Perhaps the archetypes of the Rebel, or of the Hero, dominated Navalny’s unconscious mind. His life work validates the power of Eros and the absurdity of the death instinct (Karbelnig, 2021). Mr. Navalny heralded life, subjectivity, freedom. Later becoming a literally lethal endeavor, Navalny’s public criticism of Putin’s government continued—even when imprisoned.

Over time, Mr. Navalny progressed from blogging about corruption in Russian government officials and businessmen to using social media to organize street protests. He mobilized a generation of young Russian activists, rising to prominence because of his investigations into Russia’s elite. When not blogging or protesting, Mr. Navalny studied law. He used his body-mind, his soul, and undoubtedly fuel from his unconscious mind to publicly call out situations like lawless Moscow construction projects, imprisonment of democracy-supporting figures, and increasingly severe restrictions on basic human rights—including free speech or dissent.

Later, Mr. Navalny started a radio show on which he openly criticized pro-Putin tycoons. He moderated political debates. These activities, occupying him through 2010, led to crack-downs by Putin’s government. He was arrested, fined, and incarcerated multiple times, mirroring Mahatma Gandhi’s path in India.

In 2011, Mr. Navalny led thousands of Russians protesting fraud in Russia’s parliamentary elections. He drew the largest anti-Kremlin demonstrations since Putin became president. In 2013, Mr. Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow. Deprived of the usual support characteristic of democracies, he nonetheless captured 27 percent of the vote. The results infuriated Putin. If he had not already placed a target on Mr. Navalny’s back, Putin certainly attached one then, and ever enlarged it from that point onward.

Still undeterred, Navalny ran for President of the Russian Federation in 2017. Unsurprisingly, he was barred from the race because a Russian court, i.e., oppression court, convicted him on fraud charges. Unlike Donald Trump’s 91 indictments, no evidence exists that Mr. Navalny committed fraud or any of the other crimes for which he was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. Deprived of an ability to oppose Putin, the widely popular, pro-democracy activist organized nationwide protests against Mr. Putin’s re-election.

Unsurprisingly, Putin had the Russian Constitution amended in 2020, resetting presidential terms. The amendment allows him to circumvent term limits in the 2024 and 2030 elections. If he legally stays in office until 2036, Putin’s tenure will surpass even that of the monstrous Joseph Stalin who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years. In such a case, Putin will be the longest-serving leader in the history of the Russian empire.

From 2017 until August 2020, Mr. Navalny continued in his social activism. Putin used the criminal justice system—completely under his control—to persecute Mr. Navalny. The homes and offices of activists affiliated with him were ransacked. His associates were also persecuted. Once again, none of the charges leveled against Mr. Navalny or his allies were legitimate.

On August 20, 2020, Mr. Navalny was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow when he became so acutely ill that he cried out in pain and collapsed. The flight made an emergency landing in Omsk. Treating physicians at a local hospital placed him in medically induced coma. It turned out that Mr. Navalny had been poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent, which could only have been produced by a state like Russia. After international intervention, Navalny was transferred to a hospital in Germany for months of treatment. The Kremlin denied involvement in his poisoning.

If not heroic enough already, Mr. Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021—only five months after he was poisoned. His family, friends, and supporters urged him to work in exile. Mr. Navalny refused, even though he knew he’d be arrested immediately upon arrival. Tens of thousands of protesters, mostly young Russians, took to the streets. They represented one of the largest public showdowns between the Russian people and the Kremlin in years. Producers of the January 2022 documentary, Navalny, show his investigation into his poisoning and the process of his arrest after his return. The film, by Canadian director Daniel Roher, received the Academy Award for best documentary. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, appeared onstage during the ceremony to proclaim her husband had been imprisoned for “telling the truth” and “defending democracy.”

Two months after he returned to Russia, authorities ordered Mr. Navalny to serve a two-year prison sentence in a prison known for its abusive treatment of inmates. It was the beginning of a string of prison terms based on fabricated charges. He went on a weekslong hunger strike to protest the Russian prison system’s lack of adequate medical treatment. His own his health deteriorated. Just recently, in August 2023, another Russian court sentenced him to an additional 19 years for supporting “extremism.” The sentence was to be served concurrently with existing ones. Mr. Navalny was to be imprisoned until at least 2031.

In December 2023, Mr. Navalny’s aides lost contact with him for 20 days. Finally, his spokeswoman learned that prison authorities had moved him to an Arctic penal colony officially known as IK-3 Polar Wolf. It is located in one of the most remote towns of Russia, and is also known for its harsh conditions. One wonders: Did Stalinism ever die?

Mr. Navalny was last seen on Thursday, February 15, 2024. He appeared via video link in a court hearing, standing in a prison cage and wearing a black robe. The following day, the Russian authorities reported that he had lost consciousness and died after taking a walk at the prison. His death was confirmed on February 17, 2024. More than 400 Russian supporters of Mr. Navalny have since been arrested for such modest tributes as laying flowers at the impromptu memorials across the country.

At the time I wrote this issue, family members had still not been allowed access to Mr. Navalny’s body. A Russian paramedic just leaked to the press that prisoners’ bodies are usually taken directly to a morgue at the Foreign Medicine Bureau. In Mr. Navalny’s case, the body "was taken to a clinical hospital for some reason." Allegedly, it showed signs of bruising similar to those seen in patients restrained during seizures. Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, believes her husband may have been poisoned again. Russian officials are refusing to release the body to cover up the causes of death, she believes, and the delay will prevent competent performance of proper forensic autopsy.

When I return to the study of authenticity, I will describe how one looks at life patterns, relationship themes, threads of emotions and attitudes, and dreams to find the true self. It would be surprising to learn that Mr. Navalny ever consulted a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for help with self-discovery. He seems to have been born into it, or in no need of any searching. In all likelihood, he needed psychotherapy for treatment of PTSD after the poisoning. Regardless, Mr. Navalny propelled himself through his life riding a lightening streak of justice-seeking. Nothing suggests any self-destructiveness. He believed that returning to his country was the best way to foment change. He was anything but naive. Several years before his death, Mr. Navalny said:

I'm on the very blackest part of the black list.

Like any real-life hero, Mr. Navalny had his flaws. According to Euronews, Mr. Navalny had earlier held controversial views on Muslims in the Caucasus and Georgia. He felt concerned about the influx of Central Asian migrants to Russia. In 2012, he defended what he thought were “realist” visa requirements for persons from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan seeking to enter Russia.

In any event, supporting a rampant capitalist democracy like our own brings its own turmoil. A government operating without sufficient regulation, visible in how powerful lobbyists for the medical and petrochemical industries damage our own country, speaks for democracy’s limitations. If those forces do not sufficiently represent evil, then consider that the Republican nominee for president will almost certainly be the already fined, already fraud-convicted, and likely criminally convicted Donald J. Trump.

The world just lost not only an authentic person in Mr. Navalny, but one who spent his entire life fighting for human rights. Despite the types of character deficits none of us escapes, he changed the world. Mr. Navalny demonstrates the effectiveness of bravery displayed in the context of even the most oppressive of governments. As such, may his memory serve as a reminder of the power of living a life true to ones self and devoted to the care of others.

*You might find a BBC documentary, Hypernormalization, fascinating; you can find it through a simple internet search.

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References

Dawisha, K. (2014). Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: Simon and Schuster.

Karbelnig, A. M. (2021). Laying the death drive to rest. International Forum of Psychoanalysis. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2021.1905179

Yurchak, A. (2005). Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.