Yulia Navalnaya and a new dimension of love and change
“Stop being boring”, says Yulia Nawalnaya in the European Parliament a few days ago, “start being an innovator (in fighting Putin), as my husband had been.” Alexei Navalny managed to undermine Putin’s system in new ways, using social media posts and U-Tube videos to make his research into corruption interesting, fascinating and relevant to many.
This is what Yulia refers to, but we are not used to such words (innovation!) in politics – if at all, then in the context of economic policy (let companies innovate) or in business – innovate to defeat the competition. But innovate to defeat evil? This is different and it makes us wake up and see the ineffectiveness of sanctions and moral preaching as political means to deal with autocratic regimes.
This combination of clear moral standing and innovative ways of change is unique and new, at least in the Western discourse. Yulia and what she stands for is also new and unexpected – a woman with a beautiful face bearing deep traces of suffering and grief – thanking her husband on Instagram for “26 years of absolute happiness”.
Absolute happiness? Really? How could someone who had suffered so much speak of absolute happiness. What can she mean by that? It is not happiness in the common, current Western sense – it does not seem to have much to do with joy and lightness of being. It seems to refer to a different dimension of happiness and love.
A happiness of living for a higher ideal including selfless sacrifice and absolute support for her husband, during his life and beyond his death. Now that he is gone, she takes over, goes up on stage (in Munich, in Strasburg) and says words that could cost her life. She is being observed by Russian spies and politicians, but she does not seem to care. There is strategy and desperation here, mixed with a firm resolution to continue the legacy of her husband.
“I once decided not to be afraid”, said Alexei Navalny in one of the documentaries. So bravery is a decision? It is not a trait, a thing you are born with, fearlessness of character – rather, it is a decision to overcome fear and not to submit to the status quo. Yulia made the same conscious decision. She accuses and challenges Putin in videos and life, on stages, like Alexei used to do. Is that not a different dimension of love than what we are used to both in a public and private sphere?
“Till death do us part” – people say when they marry if they marry at all. Many don’t nowadays. My friends in Germany, England and Poland, well into their 30ties, tell me this is too much of a commitment and that you can never be sure. They prefer to live together without promises and pomposity of religion. This is one side. On the other side, we see a woman who goes beyond the promises made before God – Yulia carrying on in her love after her husband had died, living on his and her ideals, acting in his and her own name, and in the name of the Russian opposition in exile and in the country. She does not recoil to private grief, as would be her right, but sacrifices even that at the altar of political fight.
This fearless widow asks Western politicians sitting in their well-lit auditoriums not to be boring. She epitomizes both tradition and innovation, high moral standards and modern ways of change, love and fight, grief and anger. She asks what she can do to help us here, with our political situations and right-wing parties financed by Putin gaining popularity. She challenges our strategy of preaching moral standards on the one hand and doing little on the other.
In the West, we are experts in finding arguments that justify our inaction and cowardice. We cover ourselves with words like with a warm blanket and think we are safe underneath – safe from our own moral discomfort and from the dangerous world “out there”. But “out there” is coming closer. People sitting with laptops on their laps and commenting that Alexei could not be a hero because of his nationalist views. Noone said a hero is a saint – but who from the commentators had ever even thought of giving up his comfort and life for something higher than one’s own ego and little private happiness…?
I read Navalny’s letter to one of his friends, the last one he wrote before his death. He writes that he had gotten the following books: “Resurrection” (which – considering his death a few days later – seems almost like an omen) and Anton Checkov’s plays and stories. He writes: “I read “In a Ravine”, a story by Chekhov, and I just stared a few minutes stupidly at the wall. Who could have said that the most sinister Russian writer is Chekhov? So I do agree, we should read classics! We do not really know them!” (my free translation).
Reading this, I have to think of a heated debate that started in the West when Ukraine was attacked two years ago – if we are still allowed to read Russian classics. As I studied them and a lot of what I learnt comes from Russian literature, I followed the debate closely, with a sense of urgency – as if someone was debating my own biography and my own decisions (Right or wrong to have studied it? Right or wrong to have lived in Russia? Right or wrong…?). Two years later, reading Alexey’s last letter, I can only think one thing – a man at the end of his strength and life is READING (!), literature seems to help him survive in this dark hour of his life, he wants more of it, he asks for it, but he will not be able to read more.
He will die in two days. His wife will take over and the whole world will read of her “26 years of absolute happiness” , wonder and fail to understand.
One Comment
Dorota Jasina
Our problem is that nobody can imagine going beyond his (her) own identity, finding something more valuable than his(hers) life. And such values exist. Navalny reminds us about it – therefore we will forget him quickly…
In a way it is sad and it is our weakness. Great weakness of modern western world…