Slava Alekseyu

This is one man who's not resting, in peace or in power

Aleksei Navalny. Screenshot taken from his Instagram (@navalny) post dated April 22, 2021. Image credit unknown.

It is often in death that the most courageous, brilliant, and powerful among us unleash the full force of their floodlights. It is only in loss that we finally comprehend the full worth and value of a human being. Because death does not debate: it is final and incontrovertible. There is no refund, no 7-day trial, no demo. No matter how much the transhumanists might fantasize about uploading consciousness to the cloud.

And yet it’s precisely that consciousness—our collective consciousness—that’s exponentially enhanced by the presence of those luminous bodies who dart among us while in the flesh, stinging us with the lemon-tipped needles of Truth, of the right things, the true things, the things that matter. Some grow larger than life, in life, igniting the flames of hope, of determination, of action, which spread like wildfire into the streets, offices, coffee shops, and deep inside households.

Still, somehow, we take them a little for granted while they agitate among us, for we too are occupied and our minds full, albeit with things more mundane and trivial and routine. We take them a little for granted until suddenly they stop stinging, their voices silenced, their minds shut off, their bodies crushed by those they most vehemently threaten and intimidate—those whose own voices are the most rusted, whose minds are the most broken, whose bodies are the most poisoned.

This is the eternal dynamic of the human condition: the very nature of each energetic imprint determines its behavior. Peace commits no violence, integrity does not corrupt, truth tells no lies, and equality does not divide. War, of course, commits volumes of violence, corruption has its own radioactive isotopes, falsehood walks red carpets, and inequality splices us into slivers of misery.

There is no black market for the tools of peace or happiness. They’re given freely and their ROI makes unicorns wither.

And so it is that the few bent toward war, dominion, and absolute power can control the lives of the multitudes who would prefer peace and an equitable economy. They do so despite the fact that they are fewer, less intelligent, much more insecure, and usually much uglier and flabbier than their charismatic, brilliant, and highly capable—not to mention of much better physique—opposition leaders. They are able to do so because they have amassed the capital, power, and influence necessary to construct the machinery of war and dominance; because they have spent years honing the legal and judicial infrastructure to bend to their will; and because they draw upon the fears, insecurities, and secret aspirations to power of the weaker members of their societies, of whom there are, conveniently, untold numbers.

Supernova Aleksei

What the dictator trolls, in their infinite lack of vision and intelligence, fail to see, despite centuries of precedent, is that once you extinguish the physical body of a person, you ignite the supernova of their legacy. You blow open the inspiration, insight, and imagination previously held within the small space of their cranium. There ceases to exist that physical boundary between their bodily form and the raw power of their ideas, their passion, their intellect—and the searing heat of their integrity. Like a star exploding, their energy radiates through all of us, burns any latent doubt, and takes new root. And those roots are now orders of magnitude stronger, because they are fueled by our collective fury and grief. Those of us here in the United States can only grieve from afar, for we have no Aleksei of our own. Even in their loss, even in their continued repression, the Russian people can consider themselves blessed that one of their own has burned so bright in the firmament of global politics.

The trolls in Aleksei’s Russia have felt his power bearing down on them for some time. Why else would they…

…arrest him more than 10 times

…have their agents stalk him on 40 flights

…obsessively surveil and stalk his every move

…lock him up in solitary and deny him the most basic of requests¹

…poison him with a banned military grade nerve agent

…censor his letters to and from his family and burn them “in an iron saucer”

…punish him for winning an Oscar²

And now that they’ve murdered him, why would they…

…refuse to surrender his body to his own mother

…blackmail her to accept the terms of a secret burial instead of a public farewell

…bag up the flowers and tributes piling up in Russian cities and detain the people placing them

…turn their judicial system onto his brother Oleg

…and why has the head troll refused to #sayhisname

In proper rebel fashion and a direct F-you to the troll, U2’s Bono got a massive crowd in Las Vegas chanting Aleksei’s name. I can see that big, broad grin of Aleksei’s shining through from the afterlife. He would laugh at least three times a day, as he shared in one of his Instagram posts; no doubt all these voices raised in his honor from the world’s largest casino town would tickle his sense of irony.

Courage is power

But why, so many of us lament, why, WHY did Aleksei willingly return to Russia on that fateful flight on January 17, 2021, knowing he would likely be arrested, instead of staying in Germany with his family? He would have been able to do so much more, instead of languishing in prison, and above all… he would still be alive today.

“But he couldn’t,” his wife Yulia says. “Aleksei more than anything else on earth loved Russia, loved our country … He believed in us, in our power, in our future and that we deserved better. He didn’t believe it just in words but in deeds — so deeply and sincerely that he was ready to give his life for it.”

Aleksei himself, in an Instagram post dated January 17, explains it in plain language:

“There are no secrets and no schemes. It really is so simple. I have my country and my beliefs. And I don’t want to give up neither the country nor the beliefs. … If your beliefs are worth something, you have to be ready to stand for them. And if necessary, make some sacrifices.”

How much are you willing to sacrifice for what you believe in? Aleksei went all the way. He would be the first one to make clear his choice is not for everyone—it’s his choice, his way, his DNA. But between doing nothing and putting your very life in danger lies a long, wide road full of options, choices, possibilities. Rainstorms, after all, are made of raindrops.

The only way Aleksei’s sacrifice will be truly validated is for us—all of us, whereever we live and whoever we are, whether we have freedom or not, whether we are oppressed or not—to take up his call to resist dictatorship and authoritarianism, to call out corruption and cronyism, to support leaders of integrity and real love for their people. To take actions small and large on behalf of our families, our communities, our countries.

As my college classmate and fellow author

Joel Stein

puts it, “…bravery is brave because it doesn’t usually work out. Which is why so few of us do it.”

True, but we can do it. More of us should do it. Aleksei’s own young daughter Dasha is already doing it.

And so it is that a man named Aleksei still towers above a troll called Vladimir. A man whose very name ignites dread in the hearts of those whose inner rot he exposes. Perhaps they think that now their job is done, the thorn in their side plucked forever.

They would be very much mistaken.

No, Aleksei doesn’t simply stand tall… he obliterates any remaining shred of perceived legitimacy, along with any sort of legacy claiming admiration and respect, that trolls like those in his homeland imagine they hold.

At times Life never shines more fiercely than in Death, for it is in that sea of black nothingness that we return to the pure potential whence we came, to recharge, recycle, and come back for more. Having completed our tour of duty in the present lifetime, we dissolve back into the timeless ocean of energy we’re still lightyears away from comprehending. Perhaps somewhere, tucked away in the madly spinning quantum breaths of the universe, are a thousand, or a trillion, nascent Aleksei’s, waiting to become a spark in their parents’ eyes, so they can lock into position and take up the flesh-and-blood form they’ll need to kick some Earthly ass. (Sincere apologies for my French to my readers.)

If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. …

We don’t realize how strong we actually are.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

~ Aleksei Navalny, 1976-2024

Aleksei’s capacity for humor and lighthearted jabs at the system that would kill him, slowly, fiercely, fanatically, is at once a stunning expression of courage and a firm declaration of moral triumph over the institutionally depraved and systematic repression of a people and the soul of their culture. Aleksei the warrior has emerged victorious in much more profound ways than his captors are even aware. He has captured the hearts of not only his people, but all of us, and in so doing, freed us.

You can kill a man once, but his spirit will kill you a million times over.

(And that’s to say nothing of the fury of his widow…)

Post Scriptum

For me, Aleksei Navalny’s death has been particularly devastating. I come from one of the Eastern European countries whose historical trajectory was derailed by the Soviet Union—and even so we had it orders of magnitude better than the Russian people. The history and destiny of my entire bloodline were altered by the actions of the Soviets (and Nazis and local communists) in my country—my life written, in so many ways, long before I was born. It is a story known only by those who’ve carried in the marrow of their bones the melancholy of misery that is existence in the Soviet system.

Aleksei and his movement symbolize healing, in multiple interlocking layers. I have always known it’s not the Russian people but the brutal authoritarianism of the Soviet and Nazi regimes that shattered my family and poisoned my country’s sociopolitical environment. One cannot hold the many and power-less responsible for the crimes of the few and power-ful. And yet we humans do just that, not just in Eastern Europe but virtually everywhere—throwing logs of hate onto fires stoked by those in power, too busy insulting and killing each other, ignorant of the dismissive smirks emanating from the palaces on high.

Aleksei’s life and purpose were much greater, much more profound, than simply investigating corruption and building political opposition to a morally bankrupt dictatorial regime. He broke through a fortress generally deemed impenetrable—the rest of the work is now up to his people, but also up to us in the larger world. I’m grateful to him for every day of his life, and I hope his legacy will inspire many more of us to live ours with a nice, big, generous serving of his passion and dedication.

1. Including food and winter boots … remember Aleksei was held at the IK-3 penal colony, a remote prison above the Arctic Circle. He had to sue the maximum security prison to get winter boots. Even Kafka couldn’t make this stuff up.

2. In 2023, the feature documentary NAVALNY won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2023. In classic irony, Aleksei was the last one to learn about it—via his lawyer in one of his court hearings. He shared on Instagram that as a reward for the win, the prison guards moved him to a cell at the end of the corridor and took away one of his only two books that he was permitted. How very considerate.