Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Can Navalny take down Putin?

Nina L Khrushcheva 17th February 2021

Today’s protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader but Putin has spent the last decade consolidating a police state.

Navalny,Putin
Nina L Khrushcheva

There are arguably two moments in the last century when a wrecking ball was taken to Russia’s political regime. In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution toppled the country’s teetering monarchy. And, in 1991, an abortive coup by Marxist-Leninist hardliners against the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev accelerated the tottering Soviet Union’s collapse. Does the wave of protests which have swept Russia in recent weeks herald another regime change?

Not likely. To be sure, unlike the protests that shook Russia in 2011-12 in response to Vladimir Putin’s third inauguration as president, today’s protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader. Not only has Alexei Navalny been a relentless anti-corruption advocate for years; when he was arrested last month, he had just returned from Germany—where he had spent months recovering, after being poisoned with the Kremlin’s favourite nerve agent, Novichok—to continue confronting Putin’s regime.

But, unlike the twilight of the czars and the Soviets, Putin’s regime is neither teetering nor tottering. Putin has spent the last decade consolidating a police state and he is prepared to use every available tool to retain power. The leader who invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, to bolster his foundering approval rating, and who secured a constitutional amendment last year, so that he could remain president for life, is not about to be forced from power by a movement of weekend protesters.

Excessive, irrational

Yet there is something particularly excessive, even irrational, about Putin’s suppression of Navalny, his associates and his supporters. Already, law-enforcement officers have detained thousands (including journalists), often using brutal tactics. The government has also blocked ‘social media’ platforms, because they are supposedly fuelling unrest.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

Meanwhile, the Kremlin-controlled television networks endlessly broadcast fawning stories about Putin and every effort is being made to discredit the protest movement. By effectively shutting down central Moscow, including public transport leading to it, the government has severely inconvenienced many citizens—and made it seem like Navalny’s fault. The government wants ‘peaceful city-dwellers’ to be able to do their weekend shopping, the narrative goes, but the ‘law-breaking’ protesters, much like ‘terrorists’, insist on disrupting ‘normal’ life.

By the Kremlin’s logic, when foreign leaders, journalists, and diplomats speak out in support of the opposition, they are merely proving that Navalny is the factotum of a global plot to destabilise Russia. To drive this point home, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently expelled three European diplomats for attending Navalny rallies—while Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, was visiting Moscow, no less.

‘Enemy of the state’

The Kremlin is treating Navalny himself accordingly—as an enemy of the state. Navalny’s farcical court hearings since his return from Germany recall Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s, with one key difference: Navalny is not capitulating to the dictator by confessing his ‘crimes’. During the proceedings, Navalny rebuked the state’s lawlessness and denounced his sentence—almost three years in a penal colony—as illegitimate.

Moreover, Navalny recently released a viral video accusing Putin of using fraudulently secured funds to build a billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea. While Russians expect their leaders to be corrupt, Navalny consistently puts into perspective the scale of the riches that corruption generates. (He did the same with his 2017 investigation into then prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev.)

Navalny’s attacks thus directly undermine Putin. In this sense, Navalny is not like one of Stalin’s Trotskyist targets: he is Trotsky himself. And he needs to be purged.

Sanctions choking

Putin’s fears are compounded by the possibility that a slow-motion palace coup may be unfolding. Since the annexation of Crimea, western sanctions have been choking Russia’s economy, fuelling resentment among the country’s political elites, who long for access to their Swiss bank accounts and Italian villas. They may now seek to oust Putin, much in the same way Nikita Khrushchev [great grandfather of the author] was ousted in 1964. And a humiliated Putin would presumably be much easier to overthrow than a popular one.

The emergence of mystics and proselytisers with promises of clarity offers further evidence that Russia’s ossified regime is beginning to destroy itself. Grigori Rasputin, a self-proclaimed holy man, helped to drive the rotting imperial monarchy into the ground. In the 1980s, when the Soviet empire was beyond reform, TV psychiatrists were all the rage.

Today, political shamans of all stripes—from communist to nationalist—are rising to prominence. They predict Putin’s imminent death, warn of a western or Chinese takeover and speculate that Navalny is a project of Russia’s security services that got out of hand. Some have even interpreted Navalny’s name—which translates as ‘push away’—as a sign that he is the one who will drive out Putinism.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

Nonetheless, as the Kremlin’s response to the protests has shown, Putin and the state are one and the same. That makes toppling him a particularly difficult proposition—at least for now.

Republication forbidden—copyright Project Syndicate 2021, ‘Can Navalny take down Putin?’

Nina L Khrushcheva
Nina L Khrushcheva

Nina L Khrushcheva is professor of international affairs at the New School in New York and co-author of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (St Martin's Press).

You are here: Home / Politics / Can Navalny take down Putin?

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

OECD,inflation,monetary The OECD and the Great Monetary RestrictionRonald Janssen
prostitution,Europe,abolition Prostitution is not a free choice for womenLina Gálvez Muñoz
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube