Tuesday 25 February 2025
“If there is any kind of memorial… a single flower, photograph… anything, then that’s the point. If there isn’t a single thing, then that’s the point, too. I’m like an investigative reporter. I need to know either way,” I explained to my wife. “I might be too late to see if people left something near the Russian Consulate to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Alexei Navalny’s death,” I added, continuing, “but I need to know.”
Why did “I need to know”? Good question.
My intellectual and personal convictions were compelling me to go visit the Russian Consulate. Going there was the closest I would ever get to paying my respects again to Alexei Navalny. After my FSB interrogation in Saint Petersburg, Russia, I don’t think it’s wise to travel to Russia. Ever. If circumstances were different, then, yes, I would go to Moscow’s Borisovskoye Cemetery where Navalny is buried, and pray, reflect, and say, “Thank you for being my hero.” Aside from teaching his memoir or writing another blog on him, I couldn’t think of anything else I could do to remember 16 February 2024, the day Russian authorities announced officially that Alexei Navalny had died.
I couldn’t make my pilgrimage to Manhattan on Sunday, 16 February because I wasn’t in town; moreover, I was busy the rest of the week. Friday! Friday 21 February 2025 was the only day available on my schedule to go to 91st Street where the Russian Consulate is located. Almost an entire week has passed! The likelihood of any remaining mementos either in front of the Russian Consulate or across from it was small. “I need to know,” I repeated.
I needed to know if people would remember Navalny. I needed to know if people would still protest on his behalf in front of the Russian Consulate in New York. I needed to know how much I was willing to go and uphold my values (with the wind chill factored in, the temperature would be in the single digits, even minus degree numbers). I needed to know what kind of person I was. I learned that much from Navalny, especially from his memoir, Patriot (posthumously published on 22 October 2024).
I wasn’t virtue-signaling. Another lesson taught to me by Navalny. I went to the City not to prove some elitist, moralistic point. I wouldn’t consider my actions of going to the Russian Consulate as civil disobedience. I wasn’t breaking any laws. I wouldn’t be detained or arrested. I doubt the Russians would even care at this point if their consulate surveillance cameras flagged me with their facial recognition technology, triggering an alarm that I once was a person of interest. I am American citizen walking on an American street. I simply would be walking the street, observing. I held no pretensions of being a pretend undercover intelligence officer. After my Katyn odyssey, I couldn’t resist making that corny joke!
After one year, would Navalny still be a presence the Russians couldn’t get rid of? Did he now become a ghostly threat, one that they couldn’t ever exorcize? I know that Joseph Stalin didn’t say the following adage, but I think Soviet and Russian authoritarians nonetheless believe in it and carry it out: “Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”[1] Putin, too, accordingly solves his problems in this way, but problematic people’s spirits (and influence) can remain despite even the best efforts to get rid of them. After one year, was the dead Navalny a problem?
Standing on the northeast corner of Madison and 91st, I smiled approvingly seeing the Ukrainian flag being displayed on the second-floor apartment fire-escape of a building across from the Russian Consulate. I remember seeing the Ukrainian banner from last year’s visit to see Navalny mementos in the neighborhood. Unlike last year’s visit here, I didn’t see any Navalny stickers on the corner traffic light posts. There was only an official NYC public notice for a community meeting. Nothing else. No frozen and faded flowers or Navalny photos in front of Cooper Hewitt Museum, and nothing in front of Spence School. How much has changed since last year!
I wasn’t disappointed or discouraged by the apparent absence of any Navalny memorial. To be dismayed or even saddened by seeing not one flower, sign… anything didn’t usher in disillusionment. Why should it? I willingly fulfilled my moral obligation. I did something. And that insight confirmed why I needed to know. Ultimately, what mattered most was that I went to the Russian Consulate for Navalny, for myself. I needed to know what I would do… not what others did or did not do. I was content because I was there, when I was able to. For me, that Friday morning was Sunday 16 February.
No one knew why I was there. And the people walking around me also could have secretly walked on 91st Street and nodded before the Russian Consulate for Navalny, for themselves, too. And I didn’t know their purposes either. Commemorations need not always be so public, so publicized, so demonstrative. Public acknowledgments can be so garish, pretentious, and meaningless. I needed to know that, too, and I found out by going to the Russian Consulate.
I certainly didn’t feel ashamed or foolish about going on my Navalny pilgrimage. I didn’t mind the frigid temperature or artic-like wind that I walked in to reach the Russian Consulate. I walked around the block and returned to Madison and 91st. Standing on the corner again, I imagined how much colder and harsher the weather conditions were in that modern-day Gulag the Russians kept Navalny in. Complaining about my cold feet seemed trivial and vulgar.
I again walked by the Russian Consulate, looking more carefully on the sidewalk curb and winterized Greenstreets spaces, searching for potential scraps of paper, ribbons, flower pedals, anything that could have been signs of someone remembering Navalny. Alas, I only found frozen pet droppings. I didn’t feel ridiculous trying; I didn’t feel naïve for believing.
Like life, politics goes on. We Americans didn’t consider Navalny to be some universal, grand figure whom others would emulate. He wasn’t our reformer. He wasn’t our shared hero. He was for me though; moreover, he will continue to have a permanent spot in my Hall of Heroes. Nonetheless, I still can’t stop imagining what if? What if Navalny succeeded? What if he did become the leader of the Russian Federation? What then?
On the commute back home, I regarded Navalny as something more than just a savvy Realpolitiker. Re-reading his final words in his Patriot: A Memoir reminded me why I respected him in the first place:
I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.
And if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles; they’re only thoughts in your head.
…. I took part in elections and vied for leadership positions. The call for me is different. I traveled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, ‘I promise that I won’t let you down, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t abandon you.’ By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them. (470)
Navalny’s prose and resoluteness were refreshing to read again because virtue, character, courage, and action do mean something; his example (both his life and death) illustrate that his words weren’t just rhetoric—mere words! He didn’t betray his voters, and, as importantly, he didn’t sell out himself. He could have remained in Berlin; he didn’t. He went back to Russia, back to Putin. He chose prison; he chose execution. Of course, he didn’t want to die in Putin’s Gulag Archipelago. He wanted to see his daughter graduate college, and to see his son graduate high school. He wanted to be with his wife.
Sacrifice should mean something more than a temporary setback, like a Lent or Advent abstinence from candy, liquor, or swearing. His sacrifice included his family. They, too, live a moral life beyond what ordinary people would be capable of. If right is to mean right, then one must do the right thing, even when doing so means getting killed. And before some of us condemn Navalny for being stupid or naïve, egoistic or attention-seeking, I must ask a different question: if he were to remain “Navalny” in Berlin but not act like “Navalny,” would I still be thinking of him? If he had stayed in Berlin and continued to protest on his social media accounts, protected by German state security guards, would he have been relevant anymore? To make real change he needed to be in Russia, among his own people, like Anna Politkovskaya did years ago; and, yes, both were killed for being themselves.
Because so few Russian politicians are indeed statesmen and stateswomen, did the Russian public simply forget what those principles that would make a Russian statesman or stateswoman a Russian “statesman” or “stateswoman”? That post-modern tendency to mock and ridicule decency, ethics, kindness… has made them cynical. Hearing someone like Navalny speak or write words like: “convictions” and “promise,” caused many Russians to laugh, groaning in disbelief that someone—one of them—still talked that way. By the way, did we also snicker hearing or reading him utter those words?
Some Russians saw a man like Navalny as a throwback to a time when they all were naïve enough, so it seemed, to believe in such fantasies, chanting the Russian version of “Kumbaya, My Lord” while holding hands and swinging along to the melody. Why did they laugh at and mock him? Why didn’t they cry instead? What morals and beliefs have they lost? Why have they given up so easily? Perhaps some of them believe they have wised up, matured beyond such illusions. Have they?
Could the Russian public define what a Russian “statesman” is? Could we? Would the Russian public recognize one? Would we? Have the Russian public grown confused about identifying one? Did the Putin-supporting Russians just give up, falsely believing they have no agency, conceding that Putin is too powerful, and they are too weak? Sure, believing in something that is genuine or someone who is authentic takes courage; doing so is a risk. Did the Russian public worry about being made fools by someone like Navalny? Were they too self-conscious of the stings of past political insults and wounds, and didn’t believe in a man like Navalny? Would Navalny pull a fast one on them, too, perhaps they thought, and would they not see that scam (again)? Because they didn’t believe, they chose not to embrace him, or to be fair, not enough Russians decided to embrace him, believing instead in Kremlin propaganda. Navalny understood these obstacles to being accepted as a sincere and compassionate Russian politician, even statesman. At least he tried, like the slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya before him, to save the Russian soul.
I know Navalny’s worth as a moral and political hero. One year later, I didn’t forget. Perhaps preserving his memory here, now in 2025, isn’t an obligation we New Yorkers or even we Americans need to honor. I think Navalny would agree with me that his larger concerns and whatever meaning(s) to be gained about his significance are ones for the Russians themselves to ponder, embrace, and honor, not for foreigners, like me, to do so. I am a distant admirer. I am satisfied to be walking in the background.
At the same time, I am not just a far-removed disciple of Navalny. I am not just strolling along a posh Manhattan neighborhood street. I am doing something: I am thinking, and I am reflecting upon his life. And I am writing. His insistence on truth and justice is indeed universal, and we certainly can… and should… learn from Navalny’s example. To live, or to exist; isn’t that the question Navalny’s spirit now sphinxlike asks me? And like all sphinxes, Navalny can’t and shouldn’t answer that riddle for me. I must find the answer.
Navalny didn’t have a tolerance for bullshit or corruption. Lies were more noxious to Navalny than the poisonous nerve agent likely secretly administered to him by undercover FSB operatives. The more I think about it, I feel that Navalny would not have cared about flowers, posters, or ribbons cluttering up a New York City sidewalk; I doubt he would have thought those fleeting objects mean something. He was a moralist. He cared about ideas. He admired action. And I hope a simple act of walking alongside the New York City Russian Consulate… in his honor… would have met his approval.
[1] Anatoly Rybakov, Children of the Arbat (1987).