Photo by belkus, 2011.
After I translated the final statement in court of Alexey Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who was on trial for a trumped-up "economic crime," I got a shitstorm of criticism from the anti-Russian blogger La Russophobe on Twitter. Many found this…odd. Yes, we got it before that Phobe doesn't like Navalny, but we thought that perhaps she could muster just the basic milk of human kindness that one musters when a person is subjected to an unfair trial merely for his civic activism.
The road-rage La Russophobe was manifesting seemed all out of proportion to the problem – trying to protest basic Russian judicial injustices — and it seemed unfair. What's the deal, really, here?
Here LR outlines her 10 reasons for denouncing Navalny, like a political denunciation of the sort that Pravda would have delivered on instructions from the Communist Party in the "basement" of its pages in the Soviet years. Nasty.
So…Navalny is a vicious nationalist; Navalny is a failure; Navalny sucks all the oxygen out of the room, Navalny is a poor speaker, Navalny didn't pander to the West, Navalny broke his promises; Navalny was disrespectful to the court; Navalny was all these things.
What?
I'm not getting while we judge someone brought to trial unfairly as a "failure". After all, it's not like Pussy Riot, where the activists staged a "happening" and a "punk prayer" and then took a big fall for that. Obviously, Navalny didn't think a lumber deal from years ago that hadn't incited any problems before was really something to worry about — and of course this and other cases were all fabricated to put a chill on him.
If he didn't leave any seconds-in-command, that's a chronic Russian problem. They are all tyrants and collectivists. They don't delegate and they don't separate powers. We can argue about this forever and they don't care and won't listen and in the end, so what, it's their country, they are going to do what they are going to do.
The three main bad things that Navalny did back in — 2008, was it — are:
o celebrated the Russian invasion of Georgia — that earned him Novodovskaya's ire, and I totally concur
o endorsed the protest call "let's not feed the Caucasus"
o hung out with some overly-patriotic fascist types or marched with them or something
Constantly when you have this discussion about these admittedly bad things, you find yourself asking — but what has he done lately? What are the sins, exactly? Tell me, is he worse than Victor Orban? Like Victor Orban when he was still supported by George Soros as a law student and on the freedom trajectory? Not fixable under pressure from anybody?
I certainly can't get behind the slogan "Let's not feed the Caucasus" because it's anti-humane. How can you cut off food or aid or resources to a poor and war-torn part of the country? That's insane. I'm told by some sage dissidents that this is a form of, um, "libertarian" thinking that is sort of like "let's not have moms sit on welfare" or something. In any event, it's not a plan. The solution to the Caucasus is not to say, let them secede, and not pay for them, unless you like bloody war-torn festering wounds on your side for the rest of your life. The problem with the Russian Empire is always this: you break off from it, you're still next to it, and nobody else but it wants to buy your stuff.
I'm told that Navalny's outbursts around the Georgian war were tempered when it became more clear that Russia was being a bully even if Georgia was being provocative — Russia is supposed to have peace-keepers and keep the peace, you know? But I don't know where this is all on the record. Links?
Nationalist=antisemite and fascist for many. So let's have the evidence. It may be there. I haven't seen it. Russian antisemitism is a real, historical, and present thing and didn't go away. And in dealing with Americans in particular, you have to concede these realities.
Example: my dentist's father suffered from the Cossacks before his family fled Russia in the last century. A Cossack on a horse came and slashed his dog with a sword. My dentist will never forget this. I will never forget this. No one should have somebody slash their dog with a sword — or worse. You can natter on about Cossacks, but for me, there will always be the image of my dentist's father as a young man, looking at his beloved dog cut in two. And the Cossacks who came to "Russia Day" suddenly in the Putin era. I had never, ever seen Cossacks before at Russian Consulate events in New York. It was creepy. It has a connotation. No one can deny it. Yes, you can keep telling me good things about the Cossack movement, but who am I going to believe, my neighbours or you?
And my Russian Jewish neighbours who fled the Soviet Union and Russia because they suffered discrimination, including all kinds of things like their kids being beaten up in school, ugly graffiti on their door, even jail if they were refuseniks. This is not trivial. People have memories and they keep them and are right to keep them. I told a supporter of Navalny that if he wants to erase this sense of his image as a nationalist and antisemite, he would have to come and speak to the Jewish community in America and tell them his plan for Jews and Israel under his rule. That's all there is to it. Nothing less would do. I was told by this supporter to basically go fish — he's not going to bother and doesn't care because Navalny doesn't court anybody in the US, really. Ok, but politics are what they are. I can't imagine how you expect to succeed in Russian when you've told millions of people you won't feed them.
The nationalist thing always feels contrived, too. When Navalny spoke at the rally in May, he came out and said "C Paskhoy" ("Happy Easter"). That was a clunker. Nobody says that on Easter who is actually a celebrater of Easter. Somebody in the audience even corrected him, and said, "Khristos Voskres" [Christ has risen!] — that is, he didn't answer to Navalny, "Voistinno Voskres" [Truly He has risen!] which is the answer, but gave Navalny the proper tag line to *start* the greeting with. That seemed like a strange clunky pandering. Does Navalny go to church?
I was told by a Soviet-era dissident that Navalny is a tee-totaling non-Jew and will go far. Ok. How far? To other tee-totaling non-Jews? What's the plan for everybody else?
Then the old Soviet-era dissident criticized me for not supporting Navalny enough, and pointing out in my last blog about him that he didn't have a second tier (the same gripe that La Russophobe has, except I merely constate it as a fact, and don't get into a rage about it as she does). This dissident replied that this was a false concern. Why, in the old days, if Ivan Kovalev was arrested, why, someone else popped up to take his place issuing Bulletin V (the final version of the Chronicle of Current Events).
I tried to explain that running massive, nation-wide movements that brought tens of thousands of people out on the street and commanded huge social media campaigns really wasn't like Tyotya Katya typing up the news from the camps when the men were arrested. Really. With all due respect. It's different.
And I felt, as I always felt with these debates about "the Nature of Navalny" is that they are very sterile. Where has he said what? His speeches, while containing populist stuff about throwing out the crooks and not letting the 100 families who run things keep running things, aren't so wrong because there are crooks and there the 100 families. He has a cause (anti-corruption); he has a following, well, let's see what they come up with.
What I don't understand is why the laser-like glare on the sins of Navalny, when Mitrokhin has casually announced his plan for punishing employers of Central Asians, as that's never been tried, and that will REALLY solve that migrant labor problem, you know?
Oddly, despite her vast unhappiness with Navalny, Phobe has endorsed him for mayor. I can't play this game, as I don't think these people should even be in rigged elections and I don't feel forced to pick one of them.I'll have enough problem sorting out Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner et. al., you know?
In the end, I felt the sheer viciousness of LR over Navalny was just all wrong and all out of proportion. What's driving this? Who is the collective or the individual behind La Russophobe? This latest venting of spleen even caused some to voice their feeling that she/he was the last of the Surkovskaya propaganda project – in other words, a contrived lightning rod to draw fire and draw out people's opinions and distract from various things. To what end, I don't know. But the very first time I encountered this persona in a fight with various pro-Kremlin bloggers — and willing to mock me in this fight with them despite our ostensibly sharing the same views — I realized this was a figure that didn't understand human solidarity and decency; this was a person who was not real.
Let's go over what's required here:
o no one has to embrace nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Caucasian hatred, fascism or anything of the sort to uphold human rights;
o one has to appreciate the efforts a civic activist made to expose corruption and get public awareness to try to curb it and prosecute it;
o one has to appreciate that the Russian judicial system is brutal and politicized and express simply the most basic protest against its trials against civic figures;
o one has to call for freedom of association and an end to the crackdown on civic organizations;
o and to continue the futile call, one has to call for free and fair elections in Moscow.
Doing those things doesn't require embracing the figures who benefit from them.
But I'm not surprised to see on snob.ru a piece by Pavel Kazarin called Navalny Must Die. Phobe, call your office!
It's a tongue-in-cheek headline because what he's trying to convey is the sheer arbitrariness of the anti-Navalny wave, which he concludes is about fashion more than anything else. You know, it's just not hip to like Navalny anymore. You know, because he's on trial now. That's just not cool. The cool kids are still looking at restaurant review apps and drinking lattes, not going to the Big House.
Kazarin thinks the people who watch TV don't like Navalny because of state propaganda, and the people who watch the Internet and blogs don't like him — not because it's dangerous, but because it's fashionable to be skeptical now. He concludes that the zombified from TV are no different than the Facebook fashionistas because they still have the same reluctances.
How easy it is to say sarcastically on Facebook that Navalny doesn't have a positive program. To demonize his nationalism. To be suspicious of his ties to the authorities. To become indignant at his lack of experience as the head of a housing office. To demand some ideological polish. But guys, did you forget what country you live in?
Well, Kazarin is not to be fazed
But who in our country has a positive program? Who among the members of the ruling party recall even 10 points of the party program? Under the conditions of Russian reality, the call "not to steal" is already by itself a revolutionary line. Which is capable of creating a new reality and new rules of the game.
Do you believe that? I don't believe that. "Live not by the lie" (Solzhenitsyn) which was a grander vision than "Don't steal" didn't really help THAT much, although it was useful. Few could do it. Kazarin thinks that Navalny is the only opposition leader out of all the motley opposition who could beat the system by playing by its own rules — which I take to mean his concept of shareholder voting and transparency demands. Except…those aren't the rules of the system, really, and he didn't play them and lost. I don't care that he lost and don't blame him, as La Russophobe, but I have to wonder what all the fuss here is really about.
Kazarin really gets mad at his hipsters!
And what did you do? You clicked "like" on a demotivation poster? You wrote a long post about why you wouldn't go to the rallies? You created a hashtag #Navalnyisnotallthat? And how do you differ from the so disliked audience of Poklonnaya Gora? They are orchestrated by the TV. You're orchestrated by your own snobbism and dream of a miracle.
He castigates his fellow Russians for feeling as if they have to wait for a Sakharov/Solzhenitsyn mixed hero in shining armour. Well, why can't they? But why can't they and we show some basic solidarity with a person who has been wrongly tried and who exposed corruption in Russia? After all, can't we walk and chew gum at the same time and say, "And we're for feeding the Caucasus and we don't like who you marched with and we think Georgia got a bum deal?" Could we have at least a little respect for someone who didn't flee abroad but stayed to face the music? After all, he isn't Limonov, and I don't recall La Russophobe ever getting as furious over Eddie.
Kazarin thinks Russians don't know how to solidarize with the living, and can only like dead heroes. Well, yeah, but solidarizing with the living doesn't mean a blanket embrace and it can be nuanced with criticism. And a demand to get some updates on these 2008 positions, you know?
I kind of feel about Navalny the way I feel about the endless debates about Trayvon's murder. I believe that George Zimmerman should have been sentenced; that he shouldn't have walked around with a gun settling scores and engaging in vigilantism and that when the 9/11 dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that" — which is true, because we all definitely don't need him to do that — he should have gotten back into his car and driven away and waited for police — and that the "stand your ground" concept surely shouldn't be extended outside your house or place of business. What happened to "duty to flee" as we have here in New York State?
In any event, what I find in these debates is that for some people, even supporting prosecution of Zimmerman, it's never enough unless you can always add on about 16 other views condemning some ostensible inherent racism in the justice system, which I won't endorse. After all Zimmerman took the law into his own hands because there were 8 robberies committed by black males in his neighbourhood and he was outraged that "nothing was being done". It's the failure to acknowledge that context that in fact is bringing on the vigilantism, but I don't think vigilantism is justified ever.
In any event, some will violently disagree with my take but what I find is that the people who do this endless Fisking and fighting the most aren't blacks, but whites who are interested in bullying and guilt-tripping others they feel are to the right of them and aren't sufficiently politically correct. That is, the race card isn't something to play any more merely for some group advantage; it's a cudgel for "progressives" to beat their enemies anywhere on the political spectrum, even five degrees away from themselves. You can neve be PC enough for this.
And I think on Navalny, the entire Navalny meme is about trying to find ways to beat up others on the political spectrum who you don't think are falling in line. Navalny is merely a placebo for politics in a country that can't really have them because the TV, the Internet, the NGOs and the rallies are controlled. It's also frankly a placebo for politics about Russia in this country where Obama has frozen everything with the reset button.
What's required now of Americans re: Navalny and everything he symbolizes is this: calling on Obama not to go to the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg. This needs a massive petition with 100,000 signatures on whitehouse.gov That's all. Everything else is talk.
I roll my eyes in shock at La Russophobe's notions that Navalny should empower women and have women leaders in his organization; chase out communists and fascists from all public marches; articulate an LGBT-friendly position. What Russian can do that? What Russian *does* do that? What is she smoking?
You can't jump over your own knees. I'm not for setting the bar low, and I'm for debating Russians with their troglodyte views. But I'm not for expecting compliance with highly-evolved Western standards which actually aren't so gelled in our own setting to these people who don't have the basics of freedom of expression and freedom of association yet. That doesn't mean we don't apply these universal standards or somehow think Russia gets a pass or isn't "ready for democracy"; but we triage. Realistically, the best you can hope out of a figure like Navalny is a not-very-much-better version or maybe-somewhat-worse-version of Orban. But you're not going to get the Golden Dawn of Greece, so stop being so hysterical.
Phobe has a peculiar idea that Lenin's failure (like we're supposed to worry about Lenin failing?!) was that he couldn't delegate and identify his zam (deputy) to promote, and therefore the murderous Stalin came into the vacuum. Huh? How about looking at the many other one-time comrades that he had murdered? That the various factions also murdered? Long before Stalin turned his minutes-taking chore into a way of controlling the organization. What an analogy!
Er, not shared power? I would have to say that the fact that Navalny played ball with the United Russia party to finagle the municipal filter issue might indicate that he could do this. People who hate that will have the same attitude as they did to Just Russia, which I always found pretty sectarian. You know, you get the same amount of static and wishful thinking and stupidity around any effort to morally support Ilya Ponomarev. Oh, his mother's a senator, golden youth. Oh, he had a big lecture fee. Oh, he's in the tank with Medvedev. But he also went to all the marches, showed solidarity for the wrongfully imprisoned like Udaltsov, tried to vote better or craft better legislation, such as it is.
I'm not for joining flawed parliaments. I'm for continuing to work in little human rights groups. But when someone does join a flawed parliament and uses it to try to at least vote against a few things like the bad orphans law or try to investigate vote rigging, I'm not for sneering. I'm not for endlessly kvetching that on the third-reading of this or that bill he didn't do this or that thing. There will be different kinds of dissent. Tolerance, tolerance — except for the violent like Limonov. Navalny is not violent, unless you think his calls to destroy the feudal system meant picking up pitchforks.
LR's claim that Navalny has "horded" power strikes me as ludicruous. What power was there to hoard? If you follow the politics of the Coordinating Council — and I don't, because I just see everybody walking out of it all the time — you would have to concede that power isn't exactly something these people have, and isn't something ever going to be shared with them some time soon.
Among the least credible of Kim's kvetches are the whine that he didn't make himself a name in the West or fund-raise. Um, what? Neither of these things are what you can do in a country in which the president has methodically run a campaign against foreign influence and funding for years on end, and has finally made judicially good on these threats in the last two years. Sorry, but that's not on. Trying to wish it on is just unfair. There isn't any serious funding for any opposition in the US anyway. It's all tied up in a few hands and it comes with too many handouts to American consultants and demands to do toothless things. Russia needs to get funding from oligarchs in its own country and political parties in Europe and Asia that don't have the rules America does about funding of political party counterparts abroad. An NGO revolution will not rescue Russia. Only a social movement will. The anti-corruption social movement was a good idea and good ideas don't depend on just one man to run them. Eventually it will reconstitute.
The take-home isn't that some Levada poll shows that there isn't some majority love for Navalny; the take-home is that there is even some support, given the tele-zombification problem — and the lack of human solidarity in the West, including from people who should know better.
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