WORLD
What were the political opinions of Alexei Navalny?
The Putin critic has been lauded in The West after his death as a defender of democracy but held many political positions seperate from liberalism.
The death of Alexei Navalny felt like a long time coming. He was poisoned by the Russian state before being jailed and sent to a former gulag in Siberia for his outspoken opposition to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Navalny has been heralded a martyr by European governments for his fight against Putin. Lynne Tracy, United States Ambassador to Russia, said he was “persecuted” and that he was a “strong voice that spoke bravely against corrosive corruption and represented hope for political change.” The European Commission said Navalny, “gave hope to democrats and civil society in Russia.”
There is more to Alexei Navalny than just his opposition to Putin. Like anyone involved in politics he is a person with a multitude of ideas and while some would be lauded by the governments lavishing praise upon him, other opinions from his past are worth analysing to get a more rounded picture of the man killed by the Russian government this week.
Navalny on Putin
The central reason for Navalny’s popularity, both at home and abroad, was his opposition to his country’s perennial president Vladimir Putin. Consistently a thorn in the side of the veteran leader, Navalny sought to discredit his opponent any chance he got. In one instance in 2021 he published a video on YouTube of a new super mansion on Russia’s southern Black Sea coast.
Putin and corruption go hand-in-hand, making government corruption a big target of Navalny’s attacks. He created the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK or ACF) in 2011. The organisation was known for its investigations into high-level corruption in Russia, including government officials, state-owned companies, and other powerful figures. Most investifations were aimed at members of Putin’s party including prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2016.
Navalny on nationalism
Probably the most contentious aspect of Navalny’s politics is his attitude toward Russian imperialism. In 2006 he took part in his first ”Russian March” alongside members of the far-right and helped organise it in 2011. He supported Russian claims to breakaway states in Georgia as well as supporting integration of Ukraine and Russia.
“Russian foreign policy should be maximally directed at integration with Ukraine and Belarus … In fact, we are one nation. We should enhance integration”.
However, his position on Ukraine did not mean he supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price,” he said. “There’s no one to do it for us. Let’s not ‘be against the war’. Let’s fight against the war.”
Navalny on migrants and Muslims
Navalny has long been criticised for videos in the 2000s where he alludes to exterminating “flies and cockroaches” before shooting men dressed in keffiyehs.
“Everything in our way should be carefully but decisively removed through deportation,” Navalny said in the video dressed as a dentist. He came second in the 2013 Moscow mayor vote on an anti-immigration platform.
In 2021, Amnesty International, the world-renowned human rights group, stripped him of the “prisoner of conscience” status it had given him over his comments which were described as “hate speech”. It was eventually reinstated.
“Yes, he got rid of nationalist rhetoric, he founded the Fund to Fight Corruption that has a liberal team and a leftist agenda. So, Amnesty had no real reasons to strip him of his status,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera. “But it is a fact that he is a nationalist and xenophobe deep inside,” he said.