I've been loosely following the events in Russia over the past week. For those who don't know, Russia has been rocked by anti-Putin protests sparked by the arrest of Alexei Navalny upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for a poisoning attempt undertaken by Russian agents. The resulting protests have been so widespread that Russian jails are now running short of space to contain newly arrested protestors.
Navalny has turned out to be an interesting character. He and others like him are the inevitable grassroots response to a regime dominated and ruled by parasites. As scholar Shaazka Beyerle has documented in her book Curtailing Corruption, it is the corruption practiced by the rulers of a crooked regime which frequently opens the door for the kind of effective nonviolent civil resistance that brings in much larger democratic social change. Navalny has exploited that open door. But it is important to note that Navalny does not represent a merely reactive response to social injustice. Rather, he has been proactive - patiently building up organizational capacity over a period of many years in order to wield the organizational power that is now on display in Russia. Remember that there are only two kinds of nonviolent resistance struggles: the spontaneous, and the successful. Or, to quote an ancient Internet proverb, "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today." Waging a successful liberation struggle requires a willingness to play a long game.
So what shall we make of Navalny's struggle? There are some encouraging signs. A movement that can continue even when its leaders have been jailed is a movement that has built strategic depth. That depth is on display now in Russia. It should also be noted that the protest movement has achieved one of the hallmarks of backfire - namely, that increased repression by Putin's agents has led, not to a decrease, but to an increase of public expressions of outrage against the Putin regime. There are, however, some areas for concern. Navalny's movement will do well to emphasize the need to maintain nonviolent discipline in its protests. Otherwise, Putin can use protest violence to bolster his claim to be the bulwark of law and order in the same way that Trump tried to make a similar claim during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Second, Navalny's movement will need to guard against infiltration by agents provocateurs. The BLM protest organizers failed to adequately guard against such agents in 2020. Third, Navalny's movement must stand for something more than just Navalny himself. Rather, his movement must articulate a clear vision of the future that can survive and inspire even if Navalny himself does not survive. Lastly, Navalny's movement can greatly amplify its power if it strategically adds methods of economic and political noncooperation to its primary methods of protest. For those methods of noncooperation (especially economic noncooperation) are far more powerful than mere mass protest, even though mass protest is a flashy, attention-getting tactic. My advice to movement participants would be to not rely on the West to apply this sort of economic pressure. As Gene Sharp says in From Dictatorship to Democracy, "Usually no foreign saviors are coming." A liberation struggle is a time for self-reliance.
This week, I have also done some further reading on Putin, especially as a rather large bit of his dirty laundry is being hung out on the washing line. For instance, I learned that he (paragon of moral virtue!) has been divorced since 2013, and has had a few mistresses since then. Makes the stories of Putin's palace more plausible... (How's that for alliteration?)
