One year on

On the first anniversary of Alexey Navalny’s sudden death in prison, Ben Noble considers his enduring political legacy

“This is the best day of the past five months for me … This is my home … I am not afraid of anything and I urge you not to be afraid of anything either.” These were Alexey Navalny’s words after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on 17 January 2021.

Ben Noble

Associate Professor of Russian Politics at UCL

Russia’s leading opposition figure had spent the past months recovering in Germany from an attempt on his life by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Minutes after making his comments, Navalny was detained at border control. And he would remain behind bars until his death on 16 February 2024, in the remote Polar Wolf penal colony within the Arctic Circle.

“Why did he return to Russia?” That’s the question I’m asked about Navalny most frequently. Wasn’t it a mistake to return to certain imprisonment, when he could have maintained his opposition to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, from abroad?

But Navalny’s decision to return didn’t surprise me. I’ve researched and written about him extensively, including co-authoring Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?, the first English-language, book-length account of his life and political activities. Defying the Kremlin by returning was a signature move, reflecting both his obstinacy and bravery. He wanted to make sure his supporters and activists in Russia did not feel abandoned, risking their lives while he lived a cushy life in exile.

Besides, Navalny wasn’t returning to certain imprisonment. A close ally of his, Vladimir Ashurkov, told me in May 2022 that his “incarceration in Russia was not a certainty. It was a probability, a scenario — but it wasn’t like he was walking into a certain long—term prison term.”

Also, Navalny hadn’t chosen to leave Russia in the first place. He was unconscious when taken by plane from Omsk to Berlin for treatment following his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Navalny had been consistent in saying he was a Russian politician who needed to remain in Russia to be effective.

In a subsequent interview, conducted in a forest on the outskirts of the German capital as he slowly recovered, Navalny said: “In people’s minds, if you leave the country, that means you’ve surrendered.”

Outrage, detention and death

Two days after Navalny’s final return to Russia, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) — the organisation he established in 2011 — published its biggest ever investigation. The YouTube video exploring “Putin’s palace” on the Black Sea coast achieved an extraordinary 100 million views within 10 days. By the start of February 2021, polling suggested it had been watched by more than a quarter of all adults in Russia.

Outrage at Navalny’s detention, combined with this Putin investigation, got people on to the streets. On 23 January 2021, 160,000 people turned out across Russia in events that did not have prior approval from the authorities. More than 40% of the participants said they were taking part in a protest for the first time.

But the Russian authorities were determined to also make it their last time. Law enforcement mounted an awesome display of strength, detaining protesters and sometimes beating them. The number of participants at protests on 31 January and 2 February declined sharply as a result.

Between Navalny’s return to Russia in January 2021 and his death in February 2024, aged 47, he faced criminal case after criminal case, adding years and years to his time in prison and increasing the severity of his detention. By the time of his death, he was in the harshest type of prison in the Russian penitentiary system — a “special regime” colony — and was frequently sent to a punishment cell.

The obvious intent was to demoralise Navalny, his team and supporters — making an example of him to spread fear among anyone else who might consider mounting a challenge to the Kremlin. But Navalny fought back, as described in his posthumously published memoir, Patriot. He made legal challenges against his jailers. He went on hunger strike. And he formed a union for his fellow prisoners.

He also used his court appearances to make clear his political views, including following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, declaring: “I am against this war. I consider it immoral, fratricidal, and criminal.”

Navalny’s final public appearance was via video link. He was in good spirits, with his trademark optimism and humour still on display. Tongue firmly in cheek, he asked the judge for financial help: “Your Honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal account, because I am running out of money.”

Navalny died the following day. According to the prison authorities, he collapsed after a short walk and lost consciousness. Although the Russian authorities claimed he had died of natural causes, documents published in September 2024 by The Insider — a Russia-focused, Latvia—based independent investigative website — suggest Navalny may have been poisoned.

“Putin is still afraid of Alexey, even after he killed him.”

Whether or not Putin directly ordered his death, Russia’s president bears responsibility — for leading a system that tried to assassinate Navalny in August 2020, and for allowing his imprisonment following Navalny’s return to Russia in conditions designed to crush him.

Commenting in March 2024, Putin stated that, just days before Navalny’s death, he had agreed for his most vocal opponent to be included in a prisoner swap — on condition the opposition figure never returned to Russia. “But, unfortunately,” Putin added, “what happened, happened.”

‘No one will forget’

“Putin is still afraid of Alexey, even after he killed him.”

Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, wrote these words on 10 January after reading a curious letter. His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, had written to Rosfinmonitoring — a Russian state body — with a request for her son’s name to be removed from their list of “extremists and terrorists” now he was no longer alive.

The official response was straight from Kafka. Navalny’s name could not be removed as it had been added following the initiation of a criminal case against him. Even though he was dead, Rosfinmonitoring had not been informed about a termination of the case “in accordance with the procedure established by law”, so his name would have to remain.

This appears to be yet another instance of the Russian state exercising cruelty behind the veil of bureaucratic legality — such as when the prison authorities initially refused to release Navalny’s body to his mother after his death.

“Putin is doing this to scare you,” Yulia continued. “He wants you to be afraid to even mention Alexey, and gradually to forget his name. But no one will forget.”

Today, Navalny’s family and team continue his work outside of Russia — and are fighting to keep his name alive back home. But the odds are against them. Polling suggests the share of Russians who say they know nothing about Navalny or his activities roughly doubled to 30% between his return in January 2021 and his death three years later.

Navalny fought against an autocratic system — and paid the price with his life. Given the very real fears Russians may have of voicing support for a man still labelled an extremist by the Putin regime, it’s not easy to assess what people there really think of him and his legacy. But we will also never know how popular Navalny would have been in the “normal” political system he fought for.

What made Navalny the force he was?

Navalny didn’t mean for the humble yellow rubber duck to become such a potent symbol of resistance.

In March 2017, the FBK published its latest investigation into elite corruption, this time focusing on then-prime minister — and former president — Dmitry Medvedev. Navalny’s team members had become masters of producing slick videos that enabled their message to reach a broad audience. A week after posting, the film had racked up over 7 million views on YouTube — an extraordinary number at that time.

The film included shocking details of Medvedev’s alleged avarice, including yachts and luxury properties. In the centre of a large pond in one of these properties was a duck house, footage of which was captured by the FBK using a drone.

Such luxuries jarred with many people’s view of Medvedev as being a bit different to Putin and his cronies. As Navalny wrote in his memoir, Medvedev had previously seemed “harmless and incongruous”. At the time, Medvedev’s spokeswoman said it was “pointless” to comment on the FBK investigation, suggesting the report was a “propaganda attack from an opposition figure and a convict”.

But people were angry, and the report triggered mass street protests across Russia. They carried yellow ducks and trainers, a second unintended symbol from the film given Medvedev’s penchant for them.

Another reason why so many people came out to protest on 26 March 2017 was the organising work carried out by Navalny’s movement.

The previous December, Navalny had announced his intention to run in the 2018 presidential election. As part of the campaign, he and his team created a network of regional headquarters to bring together supporters and train activists across Russia. Although the authorities had rejected Navalny’s efforts to register an official political party, this regional network functioned in much the same way, gathering like-minded people in support of an electoral candidate. And this infrastructure helped get people out on the streets.

The Kremlin saw this as a clear threat. According to a December 2020 investigation by Bellingcat, CNN, Der Spiegel and The Insider, the FSB assassination squad implicated in the Novichok poisoning of Navalny had started trailing him in January 2017 — one month after he announced his run for the presidency.

Navalny hoped to build a bridge between nationalists and liberals in taking on the Kremlin’s burgeoning authoritarianism.

At the protests against Medvedev, the authorities’ growing intolerance of Navalny was also on display — he was detained, fined and sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment.

The Medvedev investigation was far from the beginning of Navalny’s story as a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. But this episode brings together all of the elements that made Navalny the force he was: anti-corruption activism, protest mobilisation, attempts to run as a “normal” politician in a system rigged against him, and savvy use of social media to raise his profile in all of these domains.

Courting controversy

In Patriot, Navalny writes that he always “felt sure a broad coalition was needed to fight Putin”. Yet over the years, his attempts to form that coalition led to some of the most controversial points of his political career.

In a 2007 video, Navalny referred to himself as a “certified nationalist”, advocating for the deportation of illegal immigrants, albeit without using violence and distancing himself from neo-Nazism. In the video, he says: “We have the right to be Russians in Russia, and we’ll defend that right.”

Although alienating some, Navalny was attempting to present a more acceptable face of nationalism, and he hoped to build a bridge between nationalists and liberals in taking on the Kremlin’s burgeoning authoritarianism.

But the prominence of nationalism in Navalny’s political identity varied markedly over time, probably reflecting his shifting estimations of which platform could attract the largest support within Russia. By the time of his thwarted run in the 2018 presidential election, nationalist talking points were all but absent from his rhetoric.

However, some of these former comments and positions continue to influence how people view him. For example, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Navalny tried to take a pragmatic stance. While acknowledging Russia’s flouting of international law, he said that Crimea was “now part of the Russian Federation” and would “never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future”.

Many Ukrainians take this as clear evidence that Navalny was a Russian imperialist. Though he later revised his position, saying Crimea should be returned to Ukraine, some saw this as too little, too late. But others were willing to look past the more controversial parts of his biography, recognising that Navalny represented the most effective domestic challenge to Putin.

Another key attempt to build a broad political coalition was Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative. This was a tactical voting project in which Navalny’s team encouraged voters to back the individual thought best-placed to defeat the ruling United Russia candidate, regardless of the challenger’s ideological position.

The project wasn’t met with universal approval. Some opposition figures and voters baulked at, or flatly refused to consider, the idea of voting for people whose ideological positions they found repugnant — or whom they viewed as being “fake” opposition figures, entirely in bed with the authorities. (This makes clear that Navalny was never the leader of the political opposition in Russia; he was, rather, the leading figure of a fractious constellation of individuals and groups.)

But others relished the opportunity to make rigged elections work in their favour. And there is evidence that Smart Voting did sometimes work, including in the September 2020 regional and local elections, for which Navalny had been campaigning when he was poisoned with Novichok.

In an astonishing moment captured on film during his recovery in Germany, Navalny speaks to an alleged member of the FSB squad sent to kill him. Pretending to be the aide to a senior FSB official, Navalny finds out that the nerve agent had been placed in his underpants.

How do Russians feel about Navalny now?

“It’s like a member of the family has died,” one Russian friend told me after hearing of Navalny’s death a year ago. Soon afterwards, the Levada Centre — an independent Russian polling organisation — conducted a nationally representative survey to gauge the public’s reaction to the news.

The poll found that Navalny’s death was the second-most mentioned event by Russian people that month, after the capture of the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka by Russian troops. But when asked how they felt about his death, 69% of respondents said they had “no particular feelings” either way — while only 17% said they felt “sympathy” or “pity”, something that broadly aligns with Navalny’s approval ratings in Russia. After his poisoning in 2020, 20% of Russians said they approved of his activities — but this was down to 11% by February 2024.

Of course, these numbers must be taken for what they are: polling in an authoritarian state regarding a figure vilified and imprisoned by the regime, during a time of war and amid draconian restrictions on free speech. To what extent the drop in support for Navalny was real, rather than reflecting the increased fear people had in voicing their approval for an anti-regime figure, is hard to say with certainty.

When asked why they liked Navalny, 31% of those who approved of his activities said he spoke “the truth”, “honestly” or “directly”. For those who did not approve of his activities, 22% said he was “paid by the West”, “represented” the West’s interests, that he was a “foreign agent”, a “traitor” or a “puppet”.

The Kremlin had long tried to discredit Navalny as a Western-backed traitor. After Navalny’s 2020 poisoning, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that “experts from the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency are working with him”. The Russian state claimed that, rather than a patriot exposing official malfeasance with a view to strengthening his country, Navalny was a CIA stooge intent on destroying Russia.

Peskov provided no evidence to back up this claim — and the official propaganda wasn’t believed by all. Thousands of Russians defied the authorities by coming out to pay their respects at Navalny’s funeral on 1 March 2024. Many, if not all, knew this was a significant risk. Police employed video footage to track down members of the funeral crowd, including by using facial recognition technology.

The first person to be detained was a Muscovite the police claimed they heard shouting “Glory to the heroes!” — a traditional Ukrainian response to the declaration “Glory to Ukraine!”, but this time referencing Navalny. She spent a night in a police station before being fined for “displaying a banned symbol”.

The only recorded instance of Putin using Navalny’s name in public when he was alive was in 2013.

Putin always avoided mentioning Navalny’s name in public while he was alive — instead referring to him as “this gentleman”, “the character you mentioned”, or the “Berlin patient”. The only recorded instance of Putin using Navalny’s name in public when he was alive was in 2013.

However, having been re-elected president in 2024 and with Navalny dead, Putin finally broke his long-held practice, saying: “As for Navalny, yes he passed away — this is always a sad event.” It was as if the death of his nemesis diminished the potency of his name — and the challenge that Navalny had long presented to Putin.

Nobody can become another Navalny

“Someone else will rise up and take my place. I haven’t done anything unique or difficult. Anyone could do what I’ve done.” So wrote Navalny in the memoir published after his death. But that hasn’t happened: no Navalny 2.0 has yet emerged. And it’s no real surprise. The Kremlin has taken clear steps to ensure nobody can become another Navalny within Russia.

In 2021, the authorities made a clear decision to destroy Navalny’s organisations within Russia, including the FBK and his regional network. Without the organisational infrastructure and legal ability to function in Russia, no figure has been able to take his place directly.

More broadly, the fate of Navalny and his movement has had a chilling effect on the opposition landscape. So too have other steps taken by the authorities.

Russia has become markedly more repressive since the start of its war on Ukraine. The human rights NGO First Department looked into the number of cases relating to “treason”, “espionage” and “confidential cooperation with a foreign state” since Russia introduced the current version of its criminal code in 1997. Of the more than 1,000 cases, 792 — the vast majority — were initiated following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian law enforcement has also used nebulous anti—extremism and anti—terrorism legislation to crack down on dissenting voices. Three of Navalny’s lawyers were sentenced in January for participating in an “extremist organisation”, as the FBK was designated by a Moscow court in June 2021. The Russian legislature has also passed a barrage of legislation relating to so-called “foreign agents”, to tarnish the work of those the regime regards as foreign—backed “fifth columnists”.

Mass street protests are largely a thing of the past in Russia. Restrictions were placed on public gatherings during the COVID pandemic — but these rules were applied selectively, with opposition individuals and groups being targeted. And opportunities for collective action were further reduced following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Freedom of speech has also come under assault. Article 29, point five of the Russian Constitution states: “Censorship shall be prohibited.” But in September 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said: “In the state of war that we are in, restrictions are justified, and censorship is justified.”

Legislation passed very soon after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine made it illegal to comment on the Russian military’s activities truthfully — and even to call the war a war.

YouTube — the platform so central to Navalny’s ability to spread his message — has been targeted. Without banning it outright — perhaps afraid of the public backlash this might cause — the Russian state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has slowed down internet traffic to the site within Russia. The result has been a move of users to other websites supporting video content, including VK — a Russian social media platform.

In short, conditions in Russia are very different now compared to when Navalny first emerged. The relative freedom of the 2000s and 2010s gave him the space to challenge the corruption and authoritarianism of an evolving system headed by Putin. But this space has shrunk over time, to the point where no room remains for a figure like him within Russia.

In 2019, Navalny told Ivan Zhdanov, who is now director of the FBK: “We changed the regime, but not in the way we wanted.” So, did Navalny and his team push the Kremlin to become more authoritarian, making it not only intolerant of him but also any possible successor?

There may be some truth in this. And yet, the drastic steps taken by the regime following the start of the war on Ukraine suggest there were other, even more significant factors that have laid bare the violent nature of Putin’s personal autocracy and the president’s disdain for dissenters.

Plenty for Russians to be angry about

In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin — a long-time associate of Putin and head of the private military Wagner Group — staged an armed rebellion, marching his forces on the Russian capital. This was not a full-blown political movement against Putin. But the target of Prigozhin’s invective against Russia’s military leadership had become increasingly blurry, testing the taboo of direct criticism of the president, who is sometimes referred to, disparagingly, as “grandpa” in Russia.

And Prigozhin paid the price. In August 2023, he was killed when the private jet he was flying in crashed after an explosion on board. Afterwards, Putin referred to Prigozhin as a “talented person” who “made serious mistakes in life”.

The current economic problems are an acute worry for the Kremlin because they jeopardise this basic social contract struck with the Russian people.

In the West, opposition to the Kremlin is often associated with more liberal figures like Navalny. Yet the most consequential domestic challenge to Putin’s rule came from a very different part of the ideological spectrum — a figure in Prigozhin leading a segment of Russian society that wanted the Kremlin to prosecute its war on Ukraine even more aggressively.

Today, there is plenty for Russians to be angry about, and Putin knows it. He recently acknowledged an “overheating of the economy”. This has resulted in high inflation, in part due to all the resources being channelled into supporting the war effort. Such cost-of-living concerns weigh more heavily than the war on the minds of most Russians.

A favourite talking point of the Kremlin is how Putin imposed order in Russia following the “wild 1990s” — characterised by economic turbulence and symbolised by then-president Boris Yeltsin’s public drunkenness. Many Russians attribute the stability and rise in living standards they experienced in the 2000s with Putin’s rule, and thank him for it by providing support for his continued leadership.

The current economic problems are an acute worry for the Kremlin because they jeopardise this basic social contract struck with the Russian people. In fact, one way the Kremlin tried to discredit Navalny was by comparing him with Yeltsin, suggesting he posed the same threats as a failed reformer. In his memoir, Navalny concedes that “few things get under my skin more”.

Although originally a fan of Yeltsin, Navalny became an ardent critic. His argument was that Yeltsin and those around him squandered the opportunity to make Russia a “normal” European country.

Navalny also wanted Russians to feel entitled to more. Rather than be content with their relative living standards compared with the early post-Soviet period, he encouraged them to imagine the level of wealth citizens could enjoy based on Russia’s extraordinary resources, but with the rule of law, less corruption, and real democratic processes.

‘Think of other possible Russias’

When looking at forms of criticism and dissent in Russia today, we need to distinguish between anti-war, anti-government, and anti-Putin activities.

Despite the risk of harsh consequences, there are daily forms of anti-war resistance, including arson attacks on military enlistment offices. Some are orchestrated from Ukraine, with Russians blackmailed into acting. But other cases are likely to be forms of domestic resistance.

Criticism of the government is still sometimes possible, largely because Russia has a “dual executive” system, consisting of a prime minister and presidency. This allows the much more powerful presidency to deflect blame to the government when things go wrong.

There are nominal opposition parties in Russia — sometimes referred to as the “systemic opposition”, because they are loyal to the Kremlin and therefore tolerated by the system. Within the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, these parties often criticise particular government ministries for apparent failings. But they rarely, if ever, now dare criticise Putin directly.

Nothing anywhere close to the challenge presented by Navalny appears on the horizon in Russia — at either end of the political spectrum. But the presence of clear popular grievances, and the existence of organisations — albeit not Navalny’s — that could channel this anger should the Kremlin’s grip loosen, mean we cannot write off all opposition in Russia.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia, has vowed to continue her husband’s work. And his team in exile maintain focus on elite corruption in Russia, now from their base in Vilnius, Lithuania. The FBK’s most recent investigation is on Igor Sechin, CEO of the oil company Rosneft.

But some have argued this work is no longer as relevant as it was. Sam Greene, professor in Russian politics at King’s College London, captured this doubt in a recent Substack post:

“There is a palpable sense that these sorts of investigations may not be relevant to as many people as they used to be, given everything that has transpired since the mid-2010s, when they were the bread and butter of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Some … have gone as far as to suggest that they have become effectively meaningless … and thus that Team Navalny should move on.”

Navalny’s team are understandably irritated by suggestions they’re no longer as effective as they once were. But it’s important to note that this criticism has often been sharpest within Russia’s liberal opposition. The FBK has been rocked, for example, by recent accusations from Maxim Katz, one such liberal opposition figure, that the organisation helped “launder the reputations” of two former bank owners. In their response, posted on YouTube, the FBK referred to Katz’s accusations as “lies” — but this continued squabbling has left some Russians feeling disillusioned and unrepresented.

According to one Ukrainian academic, Navalny “fuelled the illusion in the West that democracy in Russia is possible.”

So, what will Navalny’s long-term legacy be? Patriot includes a revealing section on Mikhail Gorbachev — the last leader of the Soviet Union, whom Navalny describes as “unpopular in Russia, and also in our family”. He continues: “Usually, when you tell foreigners this, they are very surprised, because Gorbachev is thought of as the person who gave Eastern Europe back its freedom and thanks to whom Germany was reunited. Of course, that is true … but within Russia and the USSR he was not particularly liked.”

At the moment, there is a similar split in perceptions of Navalny. Internationally, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, and a documentary about him won an Oscar.

But there are also those outside of Russia who remain critical: “Navalny’s life has brought no benefit to the Ukrainian victory; instead, he has caused considerable harm,” wrote one Ukrainian academic. “He fuelled the illusion in the West that democracy in Russia is possible.”

Inside Russia, according to Levada Center polling shortly after his death, 53% of Russians thought Navalny played “no special role” in the history of the country, while 19% said he played a “rather negative” role. Revealingly, when commenting on Navalny’s death, one man in Moscow told RFE/RL’s Russian Service: “I think that everyone who is against Russia is guilty, even if they are right.”

But, for a small minority in Russia, Navalny will go down as a messiah-like figure who miraculously cheated death in 2020, then made the ultimate sacrifice in his battle of good and evil with the Kremlin. This view may have been reinforced by Navalny’s increasing openness about his Christian faith.

Ultimately, Navalny’s long-term status in Russia will depend on the nature of the political system after Putin has gone. Since it seems likely that authoritarianism will outlast Putin, a more favourable official story about Navalny is unlikely to emerge any time soon. However, how any post-Putin regime tries to make sense of Navalny’s legacy will tell us a lot about that regime.

While he was alive, Navalny stood for the freer Russia in which he had emerged as a leading opposition figure — and also what he called the “Beautiful Russia of the Future”. Perhaps, after his death, his lasting legacy in Russia remains the ability for some to think — if only in private — of other possible Russias.

This article was first published by The Conversation.