On February 16th Russian authorities announced the death of the opposition leader
an ordinary fellow. Nothing remarkable about him. He was Everyman, every Russian; one of the hundreds of thousands whose voices were usuallyand whose very existence the Kremlin ignored. When he made a speech, he didn’t fill it with literary quotes or references to history. He liked to sit down with people and talk about what worried them: health care, schools, potholed roads, the price of bread.
Through to where? To the wonderful Russia of the future: free, democratic, not threatening anyone, capitalist without the crap. And, yes, happy. He had supported Boris Yeltsin’s mass privatisations, but the rise of the oligarchs so discredited both capitalism and liberalism that he felt his dream had died. Persuading ordinary Russians to want them again—to realise that they had never actually known them—was hard. He persevered because he was proud of Russia and what he believed it could be.
He joined Yabloko, the oldest liberal party, but soon found he was an outsider, in part due to his nationalist streak. He participated in marches that also attracted nasty ultranationalists, and made ill-advised xenophobic videos . But he also began to work at the regional grassroots, mobilising voiceless citizens, chipping at corruption and injustice in a hundred little ways.
After his homecoming-arrest in 2021 there was a swift rigged trial, held in a police station. He was found guilty, of course, but at least he could address the court. He relived the climax of one of his favourite films, “Brat 2” , in which the charismatic hero Danila, a veteran of the Chechen war, confronted an American racketeer who had caused the death of his friend. “Tell me,” he shouted, “where does power lie? I believe that power lies in the truth.
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