Finding time to mourn a martyr
On a cold wintery night, Feb. 17, I made my way to the nearest church — St. Anne’s Catholic, there being no Russian Orthodox Church in town — to light a candle in honour of the martyred Alexei Navalny, age 47, the Russian patriot.
He had been held by dictator Vladimir Putin for two years in a Siberian prison. The day before his mysterious death, he appeared on video, gaunt but joking, and sending a loving Valentine’s message to his equally brave wife, the economist Yulia Navalnaya, who was in Munich at a conference.
His sudden death has gripped the world with shock and anger. His body has recently been released to his mother who has been there to plead. A Frenchwoman and theologian, Dr. Anne Soupa, cried, “Even Pilate was more merciful.” She went on to draw more similarities — such as driving the thieves from the temple — between Navalny and Jesus of Nazareth.
Suspicions are strong that Putin was behind it all. Our prime minister didn’t hold back: he called Putin a “monster.” U.S. President Joe Biden holds Putin responsible. It was notable that neither Donald Trump nor Pierre Poilievre uttered a word.
Denunciations echoed around the world, none more heartfelt than at the conference in Munich which was about security. Only a few hours after learning the awful news, Navalny’s widow, her eyes swollen, took the podium as she said that he would do, and she told the Russian leader he would be brought down by this terrible act. Four hundred ordinary Russians have braved police assaults in the snow to lay flowers in Moscow at quickly arranged memorial sites.
Before returning to Russia to face the malignant power in 2021 because, he said, one cannot effect change as an exile but you have to be within the system, Navalny had sent his wife and two children to Europe and America for their safety. He said: “You can kill a man, but you cannot kill his ideas and his sense of mission and purpose when it is greater than a single individual.”
But knowing his assassination might be possible, after recovering in Germany from a poisoning with the deadly nerve agent, Navalny returned to his native land to continue his campaign for democracy and against Putin.
The Canadian connection with this story is strong. Two years ago, 31-year-old Toronto documentary film maker Daniel Roher went to Germany and spent two months with Navalny, making what turned into an Oscar-winning film at ceremonies last March. It was called simply “Navalny.”
Roher published a heartbroken column in The Globe and Mail on Feb. 17 entitled “My Friend is Dead but We Must Continue his Fight.” He went on to say: “Russia is a paranoid regime run by a crazy KGB thug.”
The two men had gone running recreationally in Germany and discussed politics, including the politics of Canada. Speaking of his beginning in films, Roher said that after his uncle gave him a camcorder for his bar mitzvah when he was 14, he never turned back from his vocation, continuing to the Etobicoke School for the Arts. He also gives credit to the documentary unit of the CBC. His art was supported by a creative family upbringing.
The documentary opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2022. One critic said, “There’s a scene with a phone call that is the best documentary moment I’ve ever seen. It’s like capturing lightning on film.”
Navalny’s 23-year-old daughter Daria is a student at Stanford University in California and has an Instagram account: @dasha_navalnaya. I plan to reach out to her with a grandmotherly message of admiration and support in these dark days. His son Zahkar is only 16.
As the Latin American justice seekers do when one of theirs is mowed down by evil forces, we can proclaim: “Alexei Navalny: Presente!”