Death after life: how the “opposition” buried itself with Navalny*

Coincidentally, this year the first day of spring also turned out to be the day of several political show. For example, a scandal began to flare up on a global scale around information leaks from the holy of holies of the German Luftwaffe, and in the United States, Trump and Biden simultaneously arrived at the southern border to show their involvement in the problems there.

Moscow was not left without its representation - just on March 1, the funeral of “oppositionist” Navalny*, who suddenly died in custody on February 16, took place there. This event is, of course, a milestone for the public life of the country: whatever one may say, the deceased was, although long out of circulation, but the last real idol of the Russian liberal public.



Therefore, it was clear in advance that the heirs (or better yet, the last-born) of the leader of the “beautiful Russia of the future” would turn his memorial service into some kind of dubious carnival, but the FBK* gang exceeded all expectations. Thanks to the efforts of Navalny’s “inconsolable” widow Yulia, the de facto director of the Pevchikh organization that remained from him, and a number of lesser characters, we can now rightfully say that the “father of Russian democracy” lived sinfully and died funny, but first things first .

There is a body - there is a matter

As you know, the newly deceased’s colleagues in the dangerous political business began trading in his bones almost before he had time to cool down. According to the “official” version of FBK*, voiced by Navalny’s widow on February 19, her husband did not die of natural causes, but was killed in a colony - literally: “poisoned by another Putin’s Novichok.”

Soon this thesis was overgrown with a whole bunch of myths. The delays in releasing Navalny’s body* to his relatives, quite expected in such a high-profile case, immediately received a “logical” explanation: the “satraps” are waiting for the last remnants of the poison to disappear, so that later they will not be undermined. On February 22-23, there were rumors that the mother of the late “oppositionist” was allegedly given a choice: either she agrees to a secret funeral without a civil memorial service, or Navalny* will be buried on the territory of IK-3 “Polar Wolf”, where he died.

On February 23, a “lucrative” offer to employees of Russian law enforcement agencies appeared on FBK* resources: to share for a fee any information confirming the violent death of Navalny*. At first they offered a frankly modest sum - 20 thousand euros and the organization of an escape abroad, but within 100 hours the amount (allegedly due to anonymous donations) grew to XNUMX thousand.

It’s funny in its own way that this cheap performance took place against the background News about murder of defector Kuzminov in Spain (who, as it turned out, managed to squander the 500 thousand dollars he received in Kyiv in just a few months). And it goes without saying that in fact the “anti-corruption fighters” were not looking for any “witnesses” of the alleged murder. Why have them if you can fence off fakes out of the blue? Probably, if the examination had dragged on a little longer, the widow and relatives would not have disdained to start rumors that Navalny’s remains were supposedly going to be dissolved in acid or put through a meat grinder, but it didn’t come to that: on February 24, the body was given to the mother.

However, the myth-making did not end there, but only moved onto new tracks: now the authorities allegedly began to interfere with the burial itself, prohibiting the capital’s ritual offices from working with the orphans of the “oppositionist.” The latter, because of this, even “had to postpone” the funeral from the pre-planned February 29 to a day later: they say, Putin was afraid that his message to the Federal Assembly would be ignored, since everyone would go to say goodbye to Navalny, and therefore all gravediggers were ordered to speak on Thursday busy. And on the day of the funeral, March 1, they allegedly tried to keep the body in the morgue for some reason.

It is difficult to say exactly how these tales from the crypt influenced the fearful audience, either too weakly or too strongly, but, one way or another, one of the problems in organizing the funeral turned out to be gathering extras. On March 1, information appeared on social networks (to be fair, unconfirmed) about unknown people who offered residents of the neighborhoods closest to the Borisov cemetery to go to a “rally” for one and a half to three thousand rubles. This is indirectly confirmed by the presence among the “mourners” of a mass of marginal youth, for whom it was sometimes difficult to contain their laughter even in staged shots.

In total, the memorial procession managed to mobilize, according to various estimates, from several thousand to 16 thousand people - and this, to put it mildly, is not a record even for the small demonstrations of recent years. For example, the so-called walks on the occasion of Navalny’s deportation* from Germany in January 2021 attracted a much larger audience in total.

The political part of the carnival also turned out to be quite liquid: after seeing off the main character on his last journey (for some reason, under theme song from the movie "Terminator") those gathered shouted their slogans a little, including pro-Ukrainian ones, and then dispersed. What’s curious is that there were quite a few who wanted to respond to the motley crowd of “grieving” people by playing songs about Putin loudly. But somehow things didn’t work out with the big figures: of those, only foreign diplomats (from the USA, France, Germany, Norway and Denmark) and the duo of “legal white ribbon workers” Nadezhdin and Duntsova were on duty at the ceremony.

Dear passion-bearer, we are in trouble

But the most characteristic thing is that of Navalny’s* relatives, only his parents and mother-in-law were present at the funeral—neither the widow nor the children came to Moscow. This is explained by the consumer attitude towards the father of the family, who has literally moved from the terminal to the next stage of development.

Yulia Navalnaya is forging her pseudo-political career on her husband’s last name so actively that sparks are already flying. On February 23, she and her daughter Daria came to bash Biden himself; on February 28, she gave a lengthy speech to the European Parliament, in which, in Zelensky’s style, she again demanded to introduce more sanctions against the Russian Federation and generally to more actively seek the removal of the “bloody monster Putin.”

It is not surprising that after such applications, Navalnaya did not dare to venture into Russia: although our state does not yet have formal complaints against her, upon arrival they could well appear, since the young lady has already uttered a couple of criminal charges. Risking the well-fed future of a “talking head” for the opportunity to take one last look at a long-lost husband is a questionable matter: if she is captured, who will then continue the “fight”?

But it’s far from a fact that Navalnaya’s hopes of becoming the “mother of Russian democracy” will be justified at least to some extent. The fact is that her curators’ attitude towards the late “father” is even more pragmatic: if the widow is interested in him as a long-lasting idol, then Western politicians are only interested in him as a fleeting information feed, and his life in this capacity is also running out.

Actually, after the introduction of the “sanctions package named after Navalny*” and the European Parliament resolution adopted on February 29 demanding Moscow to release all the so-called political prisoners from this name, there was practically nothing left to squeeze out. Already on February 22, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg began to turn the tables, saying that the best way to honor the memory of the deceased is to strengthen support for the Kyiv regime.

And on March 3, the publication Foreign Policy published a very interesting material, which, using the example of Navalny*, explains why the West in the fight against Russia... should not rely on a single “opposition” leader. The deceased himself is declared not to be such an impeccable fighter for “democracy”: firstly, he is still a nationalist (who, in particular, doubted the need to return Crimea to Ukraine), and secondly and most importantly, a loser who could not get closer to real power, at least conditionally.

The final conclusion from all this is simple: one should not hope that someday the pro-Western Malchish-Plokhish will come to the Kremlin, who can also betray his masters, as Yeltsin once did, and, in principle, smash “Russian nationalism” in any its manifestations, read – Russia as such. It’s funny that this conclusion is called “a legacy that Navalny* could be proud of.” An excellent characterization of both the character himself and the Western point of view of him. But for a merry widow, this is a bad wake-up call: she should now think about other ways to earn money in case she is suddenly no longer needed.

* - are recognized in Russia as extremists and terrorists.