Alexei Navalny

Forty-seven-year-old lawyer and politician Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison February 16, 2024. He was serving a nineteen-year sentence for opposing and exposing the corrupt government of Vladimir Putin. Navalny had survived an August, 2020 poisoning through treatment at a hospital in Berlin, Germany. He voluntarily returned to Russia in January, 2021 where he was arrested and imprisoned. He is survived by his widow Yulia neé Abrosimova Navalnaya who has staunchly supported Alexei’s courageous public struggle for justice. Yulia vows to continue their Quixotic crusade. Why continue and what has Navalny’s life mattered are pervading questions?

Navalny was born in Russia June 04, 1976. His family has roots in Ukraine and Navalny spoke Russian, Ukrainian and English. Navalny’s daughter became a student at Stanford University in 2019 and Navalny was on a fellowship to Yale University in 2010. Most likely Navalny’s ties to Ukraine and America factored into the Russian government’s constant campaign to denigrate, marginalize and punish his populist words and actions opposing Russia’s autocratic rule including its invasion of Ukraine.

Navalny had to know his return to Russia would lead to his imprisonment and probably death. He surely also knew his valiant struggle was a mere beau geste that was akin to flinging flowers at the crush of Russian tanks. And he could have had a comfortable and financially rewarding life with his wife and two children in several western countries. So, once again, why?

In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote that was the inspiration for Dale Wasserman’s musical The Man of La Mancha, the feckless hero is fantasizing while in prison waiting to face the Spanish Inquisition. Navalny was not a foolish romantic in a frozen Russian gulag awaiting Putin’s tender mercies. Navalny undoubtedly realized his inevitable fate if he persevered in his one-man quest for justice. He also surely knew his and his family’s sacrifices would do little to change the course of history.

So we who watched his holy crusade from a safe distance are left to puzzle out, Why? What, if anything, did it all mean? What do the sacrifices of anyone who casts themselves against the barricades of injustice in a seemingly impossible dream mean?

The music and lyrics of Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion ask and answer this ageless mystery of why some people give everything for an ideal:

“This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far 

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For that Heavenly cause 

And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest 

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star”

To soldier on when the battle looks unwinnable is what makes people and life worthwhile. As Robert Frost might say, it is the struggle, not the outcome, that matters. Alexei Navalny faced the unbeatable foe of Putin’s Russia with full knowledge his efforts’ likely result would not be immediate change. What makes him heroic is his fortitude to strive anyway. And, if enough people are inspired by his quest, perhaps it will not have been in vain.