The death of Alexei Navalny, likely a murder at the hands of the Russian state, is a grim and timely reminder of the potential costs, but also the inspirational power, of courage.
There are different kinds of courage. There is physical courage: the willingness to endure physical trauma or even death in pursuit of a cause that you believe is right. There is moral courage: the willingness to endure ridicule, hatred and attacks in defense of what you believe is just. And there is psychological courage: the willingness to endure mental torment or even physical torture in order to fulfill the mission you believe has been given to you. Navalny, the chief political opponent of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the Russian patriot and freedom activist, former candidate for mayor of Moscow and a potential rival to Putin himself, displayed all three kinds of courage over the many years he stood up to Russia’s 25-year autocrat.
The death of Alexei Navalny is a grim and timely reminder of the potential costs, but also the inspirational power, of courage.
Navalny survived a poisoning in August 2020, allegedly by the Kremlin, and convalesced in Germany. Against all advice, and knowing that returning to Russia would likely mean his imprisonment and death, he returned to the country in January 2021 to insist on his countrymen’s right to freedom of assembly, freedom to elect leaders of their own choosing and freedom of speech. Over the years, he inspired Russians, particularly young Russians, to stand up for themselves and for their freedom.
This week, Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founder of the feminist collective Pussy Riot, reflected on meeting Navalny for the first time as a 16-year-old rallying for a free Russia in Moscow in 2007. “We lock our arms and together, push the police out of the street,” she told The New York Times. “Russia could be free. It’s a new feeling for me. This is where I see Alexei Navalny for the first time. For the next 17 years, I saw my friend, Alexei, rise from a Moscow blogger to a global figure, giving hope and inspiration to people around the world.”
Tolokonnikova continued: “He helped me and millions of Russians realize that our country does not have to belong to KGB agents and the Kremlin’s henchmen. He gave us something else, a vision he called the beautiful Russia of the future. This vision is immortal, unlike us humans.”
Navalny’s life and death remind me of another courageous man who surrounded himself with young activists, inspired and led them and ultimately died for the cause of freedom: Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi, a veteran who had fought for the Army in Europe in World War II. Scores of Black soldiers, liberated from the suffocating confines of the segregated South, chose to remain in Europe after the war, as they preferred to live as men in a foreign country rather than as second-class citizens in their own country. But like Navalny, Evers returned to the place where he knew he would likely face physical torment and death.
Navalny’s life and death remind me of another courageous man who surrounded himself with young activists, inspired and led them and ultimately died for the cause of freedom: Medgar Evers.
He chose to come back home to Mississippi, where he immediately took up the fight for what he called “first-class citizenship.” His fight was for the right to vote, the right to peacefully assemble and protest, the right to be treated with dignity in public spaces, including lunch counters, shops and libraries, and the right of children and young people to get an education, free of the indignities of segregation.
And on June 12, 1963, he was killed for it. He was shot dead in front of his own home in Jackson by a klansman named Byron De La Beckwith, whose defense was secretly aided by the state of Mississippi and who, after a pair of mistrials in 1963 and 1964, walked free for 30 years.
The physical, moral and psychological courage Evers and Navalny displayed is as obvious as the cowardice of the men and systems that killed them.
They left their legacies in the hands of strong and brave women: Myrlie Evers-Williams and Yulia Navalnaya. These women are still bearing witness to their husbands’ courage, still telling their stories and still fighting for the causes they held dear. Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to get justice for her husband and has emerged as Russia’s newest opposition leader, stepped into her husband’s shoes as surely as Myrlie Evers-Williams stepped into her late husband’s. In 1995, she became one of the few women leaders of the NAACP when she was named chair of the organization’s board of directors.
Navalny’s family was forced to plead for his body. Russia seemed determined to hold it hostage until any evidence of murder, likely by poison, dwindled away. It was unclear Thursday whether the Navalny family would be permitted to hold a public funeral. But what we know from history, including the history of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, is that the evidence of murder may fade, but so long as the fight for justice continues, it cannot be made to disappear forever.
It took 30 years for justice to come to Medgar Evers’ killer, but, in no small part due to Myrlie Evers’ determination, it eventually came.
It took 30 years for justice to come to Medgar Evers’ killer, but, in no small part due to Myrlie Evers’ determination, it eventually came. De La Beckwith was finally convicted in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2001 at age 80.
Putin should live in fear of Navalny’s ghost and the courage his memory will provoke in the hearts of young Russians. That’s what happened in Mississippi. Evers’ young mourners gained more courage and took to the streets of Jackson and other parts of the state even more forcefully after he was assassinated.
Tolokonnikova said, “Navalny gave us ideas, and ideas are immortal.” Medgar Evers liked to say, “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”
The problem for those who oppose freedom, whether in Mississippi or Moscow, is that courage is contagious. And justice has a funny way of prevailing over fear.
Joy-Ann Reid is the author of "Medgar and Myrlie — Medgar Evers and the Love that Awakened America."
