Alexey Navalny: Russia's Anti-Corruption Hero or Pro-Nationalism Foe?
Western media sources have glamourised anti-corruption blogger Alexey Navalny, but he has plenty of political skeletons in his closet. Is he promoting or obstructing Russia's path to greater transparency?
- Alexey Navalny is living the blogger's dream. A lawyer by training, the 34-year-old Russian media darling is both famous and audacious. Last year he sunk the competition in a virtual election for Moscow city mayor, and the Russian and international press have since published numerous profiles about his online anti-corruption crusade.
- Alexey Navalny, a lawyer and blogger known for his crusade against the corruption that pervades Russian business and government, sat in a radio studio in Moscow. Tall and blond, Navalny, who is thirty-four years old, cuts a striking figure, and in the past three years he has established himself as a kind of Russian Julian Assange or Lincoln Steffens.
Several journalists have speculated Navalny may pursue public office.
- So should the regime be concerned? After all, the stars seem to be aligned in Navalny's favor. Annual opinion polls by the well-respected Levada Center show that corruption is one of the electorate's top concerns. And the ruling tandem's ratings have been on the decline. Meanwhile, buzz is building that the Russian internet-often billed as the country's "last free speech platform" -- just might beget a viable opposition to the soft-authoritarian system currently in place.
- Navalny—whose fame in Russia is growing almost as quickly as that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—represents a new generation of political activists, one who sees the system’s vulnerabilities and targets his blows accordingly. In an unofficial Internet vote organized by the newspaper Kommersant and the electronic resource Gazeta.Ru in October, Navalny was the most popular candidate to succeed Yury Luzhkov as mayor of Moscow, garnering 45 percent of the votes.
- A former activist in a liberal political party, Yabloko, Mr. Navalny says he will eventually run for public office. He now calls himself an advocate of the rights of members of the Russian middle class — people who have invested in the stock market and who he says are losing money to corruption and mismanagement.
Western media sources have failed to mention that many Russians are unfamiliar with him.
- Only 15% of Moscow inhabitants and only 9% of the internet audience polled know who Alexey Navalny is.
Some users have been blogging about Navalny's political past, alluding to his strong ties to nationalism
- As Navalny himself noted with a certain exhaustion, Ioffe and the New Yorker staff hounded him for weeks, following him to the corners of Russia as he worked, phoning his relatives to fact-check the minutia of the article’s text, and generally “driving him batshit crazy,” as Ioffe put it. This might be the thoroughest, most intimate study of Russia’s hottest political figure today. So what did it leave out? In a single word: nationalism.
The Good Treaty's Kevin Rothrock provides a detailed chronicle of Navalny's political history. Rothrock highlights some of Navalny's controversial political moves.
- One of the most infamous moments in Navalny’s pre-superstar history is likely the night of October 29, 2007, when one of his debates was interrupted by hooligans, after which he brawled with and shot one of the scoundrels in the street outside Club Gogol. The case file on this incident was 137 pages. Prosecutors apparently relaunched the inquiry four times, despite repeated attempts by the police to end the investigation.
- Unrepentant about having used the weapon to shoot the hooligan, he wrote, ”I acted absolutely correctly and completely legally,” adding that the shots were “(a) outside the debate hall, (b) not to the head, and (c) from an acceptable distance.” Responding to criticism that he used excessive force, Navalny dismissed the idea that he should have been carrying a knife for self-defense instead, arguing that a blade’s “stopping action” is too weak
Navalny's latest internet project, Rospil.info, amplifies knowledge of anti-corruption by publicizing suspicious government tenders.
- The site would not be possible without Medvedev’s initiative, two years ago, to post online all government requests for tender—the documents whereby government entities announce their need for goods or services to potential bidders. Almost immediately, reports of strange deals started surfacing in the press.
- Navalny’s site has been active since the moment it launched, with hundreds of recommendations and links posted on major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and VKontakte. It has also received “recognition” from civil servants: a number of state agencies have removed the most dubious tender dates and contract timetables from their sites.
But, Rospil has had its problems. The website is funded by donors. Their personal information was recently leaked to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)-- leading to harrassment towards Navalny supporters.
- In an interview with the radio station Echo Moskvy [ru], Yandex's Head Editor Elena Kolmanovskaya said that according to Russian law, Yandex was required to supply the FSB with the donors’ account information, though she stressed that she found the disclosure of such information objectionable. Private data on “about 100″ donors was released to the FSB
