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Alexei Navalny Is a Complicated Figure – But a Gift to the Russian Left
by johan

    It is this political ambiguity, his unwillingness to nail his colours to the mast, that has made Navalny such an effective spokesperson of the disparate anti-regime movement, appealing to anti-Putinists across the political spectrum. The Russian left is understandably sceptical of Navalny, but they also need him. For although Navalny is a populist chameleon, driven more by contempt for Putin than by any clear political programme, he is also a profoundly successful political organiser – something the Russian left has been decidedly lacking.

    There is massive latent and local support for the left in Russia: the majority of Russians favour a strong welfare state, for example, and are often ready to militantly defend their rights in their cities and towns. On a national level, however, the country’s progressive movements are organisationally weak. The conservative, Soviet-nostalgic Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), technically the biggest opposition force, hardly puts up a fight, despite being the main victim of systemic electoral fraud.

    Navalny has the potential to unify and organise these groups under a single banner – or at least Ilya Matveev, associate professor and deputy dean of the Department of International Relations and Politics at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in St Petersburg, thinks so. “The majority of leftist activists joined the recent [Navalny-led] protests to try and create a left centre of gravity, with its own ideology, platform, positions and leaders,” Matveev explains on a video call. This tactic is showing signs of success: in Izhevsk, a city around 1,000km east of Moscow, the extra-parliamentary Russian Socialist Movement has been prominent at the recent protests. The left has taken the momentum Navalny generated, and run with it.