“He was not afraid, he believed in what he said and he had confidence in himself. And the people supported him because of that, not because others, including those in power, told them to,” said Gulia (her husband Igor in one hand; in the other, three carnations), one of the thousands of people who yesterday accompanied him on his last trip to the body of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni, who died two weeks ago in an Arctic prison.
Like many others attending his funeral and burial, this couple considers Vladimir Putin’s best-known Kremlin dissident of the last decade to be a hero. “It was also our hope. If he wasn’t afraid, we shouldn’t be either. That’s why today the right thing to do was to come here,” he added in the middle of a kilometer-long queue that surrounded the church of the Icon of the Virgin Mary and continued two or three streets further.
After several hours of waiting, applause broke out that seemed to have no end when the hearse appeared with the body of the dissident. More timidly, someone began to chant “Navalni, Navalni!” and the crowd chanted the name for a few minutes. “The most important thing that he gave us, in my opinion, was his courage to fight against corruption, because this is the main problem of many countries, including of course ours,” said Viacheslav while obeying the instructions of the police officers, who cleared the entrance to the Orthodox temple and sent everyone who arrived to look for the end of the serpentine line.
For at least a day, the thousands of Navalny supporters who came to say goodbye followed his example and were not afraid. And they did not heed the words of the Kremlin, which through its spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, warned that participating in unauthorized demonstrations is punishable. “We want to remember that there is a law that must be followed: any unauthorized assembly will constitute a violation of the law,” he said in his daily press conference.
Peskov did not respond to journalists’ requests to evaluate Navalny’s figure as a politician, and also avoided sending a message to the opponent’s family. Becoming the most critical voice of the Kremlin since the protests of 2011 and 2012, the most important of the Putin era, the Russian president has always avoided even saying his name in public.
Lawyer and opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who was 47 years old and was serving a combined sentence of three decades in prison, died on February 16 in a remote prison in the Russian prison system, known as Polar Wolf for its harsh living conditions. The IK-3 penal colony in the village of Jarp, in the Yamalia-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, is located 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow and 60 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
The death certificate delivered to his mother, Ludmila Naválnaya, indicates that he died of natural causes. According to prison authorities, the opponent felt ill after taking a walk, lost consciousness and then neither the prison services nor the ambulance that arrived could revive him.
Navalny’s co-religionists reject this version and directly accuse Putin of ordering what they call “murder.”
The funeral began, as planned, at two in the afternoon Moscow time (noon in Barcelona). There were fears there could be delays because morgue officials did not release the body to his family until an hour before the ceremony was to begin. But finally the hearse arrived ten minutes before the start of the service.
They were waiting in the Márino neighborhood, where Navalni lived when he was free with his family (wife and two children), people of all ages. Some carried carnations and red roses in their hands. No banners or any other object that indicated that he was attending a political event and not a funeral. Furthermore, everything was taking place under the watchful eye of a large number of police officers, who deployed a strong security device.
“Navalni was our hero, our hope, the only one of a few who was so brave to go to the end and who told people that Russia could change,” explained Yelena, a woman in her forties, before tears fell. prevented him from continuing to speak.
“I don’t think Navalny was wrong to return to Russia (in January 2021, after recovering in Germany from poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent). That was his mission. For me, he was like the Russian Che Guevara,” said the retiree Viacheslav.
According to Yekaterina, Navalny was always “someone very alive.” He “chose his destiny and followed it regardless of the difficulties. He also led many to politics, explaining it in a very didactic and intelligent way.”
Irina, who accompanied her husband Viacheslav, thought there would be half an hour for the public to enter after the religious service, but in the end only the opponent’s family and friends were able to be in the church.
To make up for it, many had brought candles, which they lit with devotion and respect while the ceremony took place inside.
Since he returned to Russia and was detained in January 2021, Navalny has not known freedom. Although some of his followers doubt whether he was wrong to return, they all highlight his bravery for following his ideas despite the consequences. Another question is whether with him goes the last hope of those who want to change the current political system in Russia. Igor and Gulia are pessimists. “All the other (opposition) leaders are weaker. I don’t think there will be any hope in the short term,” he says. And she supports him: “There is no hope in the current swampy waters.”
Not far from the buses brought by the law enforcement forces and the OMON (riot police) vans, young Ramazán confessed that he was not a follower of Navalni, but that he considered it an obligation to come and say goodbye to him. “He was a symbol of freedom. I am here above all because Navalni was brave. It will be very difficult for whoever takes up the witness of his cause to be able to compare himself to him.”
“It is impossible to lose hope, because it does not depend on a single individual,” Yekaterina believes. And more optimistic is Viacheslav, who maintains that “if day always follows night, there are always possibilities for change, and I believe that this will come soon.”
The cries of “Alexei, Alexei!”, followed by applause, indicated almost an hour later that the religious obligations had concluded. The hearse left the temple again while the followers, partisans or simple admirers of the opponent chanted his first name. Some people threw their bouquets of flowers as the mechanized float passed.
This was headed to the Borisovo cemetery, two kilometers to the south, crossing the Moskva River.
There were also thousands of people who followed the car on its last trip to the cemetery. Half an hour of walking, crossing the Bratéyevsky bridge to save the river, while police stationed every ten meters along the way watched them. The majority were warned that they would not be able to access the cemetery. But that did not stop them from accompanying the opponent. “We will go and wait there,” several people said. They knew that this was of no use, but they also knew that with Navalny’s example it was a kind of obligation for them.
The body was delivered to the ground while the song My way, by Frank Sinatra, one of Navalni’s favorites, was playing, according to his allies in a live broadcast from the funeral ceremony.
The one who could not attend the funeral was his widow, Yulia Naválnaya, who is in exile. She said goodbye to her husband with a message on the X network (formerly Twitter). “Thank you for 26 years of absolute happiness. And even during the last three years of happiness (since Navalny went to prison). For your love, for your support, for making me laugh even from prison, for always thinking of me,” she wrote. “I don’t know how to live without you, but I will try to make sure you are happy and proud of me up there,” added Navalnaya, who a week ago promised the opposition’s followers that she was going to continue with his mission.
Many of the demonstrations that Navalny organized or inspired ended with arrests. In his last goodbye, although it took place without major incidents, there were also some. Police arrested at least 56 people in 14 cities in the country, according to data from the NGO OVD-Info. The highest number of arrests were made in Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Moscow, 14, 10 and 6 respectively.
