Anti-Putin does not mean anti-imperial. Why the roman­ti­cisa­tion of Russian dissi­dents is misleading

This autumn, the memoirs of Kremlin oppo­nent Alexei Navalny were published in Germany. The tire­less fighter against the corrup­tion of the Putin regime was murdered in a Russian penal camp in February 2024. In the reviews of his memoirs (apart from a few excep­tions such as those by Nikolai Klime­niouk in the Frank­furter Allge­meine Sonn­tags­zei­tung  and Ulrich Schmid in the Neue Züri­cher Zeitung), a pattern is repeated that could already be observed in nume­rous obitua­ries in German news­pa­pers after his death: the styli­sa­tion of Navalny as a hero, a fighter for demo­cracy and freedom, while at the same time his well-documented racism, natio­na­lism and impe­ria­lism are played down or even comple­tely ignored. The media discourse in Germany about Navalny and also about his widow, Yulia Naval­naya, who wants to continue his legacy, is exem­plary of the uncri­tical roman­ti­cisa­tion of the Russian anti-Putin camp in the West.

At the same time, there is an imba­lance between the inte­rest in (supposed) beacons of hope from Russia and those Ukrai­nians who are curr­ently fighting for the survival of Ukraine and its demo­cracy. For example, around the same time as the publi­ca­tion of Navalny’s memoirs, it was announced on 18 October that the human rights acti­vist and soldier Maksym Butke­vych had been released after almost two years of Russian impri­son­ment. The tages­zei­tung was the only major German news­paper which considered this news­worthy. This is just one example of many that ‘good Russians’ (an ironic descrip­tion by critics of proble­matic figures from the Russian anti-Putin camp) enjoy a higher media presence in the Western media than Ukrai­nians fighting for their freedom, even during Russia’s war of aggres­sion. The romantic idea­li­sa­tion of Russia, which the histo­rian Gerd Koenen aptly described as a ‘Russia complex’ in one of his books, is still not a thing of the past despite Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in February 2022. On an analy­tical level, this is unsa­tis­fac­tory and it is proble­matic from a poli­tical perspec­tive. It was not least the complete misjud­ge­ment of Russia’s current state that at least faci­li­tated the full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine.

It is note­worthy that the roman­ti­cisa­tion of Navalny can also be observed in profes­sional circles. For example, Kerstin Holm, the long-standing cultural corre­spon­dent of the Frank­furter Allge­meine Zeitung in Moscow, sees in Navalny a ‘perso­na­lity of tremen­dous curio­sity, lear­ning ability and crea­ti­vity’, who ‘early on sought out exch­anges with people outside his bubble (such as natio­na­lists, for which many demo­crats criti­cised him)’. The latter is simply wrong. Navalny did not seek out dialogue with natio­na­lists; he was a natio­na­list himself and never made a secret of it. Even if he was not part of the orga­nised extreme right-wing mili­tant scene, Navalny attracted atten­tion with extre­mist racist state­ments, espe­ci­ally in the early phase of his poli­tical biography. One example is a video published by the Russian National Libe­ra­tion Move­ment in 2007, in which Navalny, a self-declared ‘certi­fied natio­na­list’, refers to non-white people, who are labelled as ‘alien’ and Muslim in the video, as ‘flies and cock­roa­ches’ and then shoots one of them in a game. In the Ostcast of the weekly news­paper DIE ZEIT, Eastern Europe experts Alice Bota and Michael Thumann played down the video, which uses a fascist-like (image) language, as ‘half-joking’ or a ‘gag’ and empha­sised that such state­ments were limited to this phase in Navalny’s life. It is undoub­tedly true that a deve­lo­p­ment can be seen in Navalny’s biography, in the sense that he made the fight against corrup­tion in Russia his main theme. But he continued to see himself as a natio­na­list. He merely toned down his tone over time, but anti-migrant demands and xeno­phobic rhetoric remained part of his poli­tical programme, both as a candi­date for the Moscow mayoral elec­tions in 2013 and in his (unsuc­cessful) attempt to be nomi­nated as a presi­den­tial candi­date in 2018. He never distanced himself in the sligh­test even from his most inhu­mane state­ments. This was a deli­be­rate decision by a man who saw himself as the anti­thesis of Vladimir Putin and wanted to become Russia’s presi­dent. As histo­rian Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon put it in her obituary of Navalny, ‘Navalny’s Future Russia Did Not Include Everyone.’

The margi­na­li­sa­tion of this aspect of Navalny and his poli­tical programme may be related to the fact that Navalny’s focus on corrup­tion succeeded in attrac­ting younger people to protest against the Putin regime. The great reco­gni­tion that Navalny enjoys in the West is also rooted in this. After all, so the argu­ment goes, someone managed to orga­nize a little resis­tance to Putin on the streets. But what is over­looked is that the narrow focus on the issue of corrup­tion was also the great poli­tical failure of Navalny. In Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine, it can be seen that it is not corrup­tion that makes Russia so dange­rous and destruc­tive, but violence and colo­nia­lism coupled with extreme nationalism.

The colo­nial mindset of the Russian anti-Putin camp

Navalny is by no means the only repre­sen­ta­tive of the Russian anti-Putin camp to be uncri­ti­cally elevated in German media discourse to a symbol of a diffe­rent, better Russia. The same applies, for example, to the former Russian poli­ti­cian Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested and impri­soned in Moscow in April 2022 for oppo­sing Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine. Although he is a long way from the extreme racism of someone like Alexei Navalny, his atti­tude also reveals a wide­spread atti­tude in the Russian anti-Putin milieu: an unwil­ling­ness to hold Russian society accoun­table for Russia’s deve­lo­p­ment. Shortly after Kara-Murza was released from prison in August 2024 as part of a prisoner exch­ange, he stated that in the future he would focus his efforts on ending the compre­hen­sive sanc­tions against Russia. After all, only Putin and his clique are respon­sible for this war and conse­quently only they should be affected by sanc­tions. In doing so, he effec­tively declared the suffe­ring and deaths in Ukraine and its victory to be a secon­dary matter: after all, the point of Western sanc­tions is to weaken the Russian war economy and thus make a defeat of Moscow more likely. Kara-Murza made a sharp distinc­tion between Putin and Russia and spoke – as had Navalny and his wife Yulia Naval­naya before him – absol­ving Russian society of any respon­si­bi­lity for this war, even going so far as to claim that the majo­rity of Russians were against the war.

Putin oppon­ents Ilya Yashin and Andrey Pivo­varov, who were also released as part of the prisoner exch­ange, made similar state­ments. Even after the full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, Navalny, still in prison, continued to deny that Russia is an impe­ria­list country. Navalny’s line of argu­ment was remar­kable. He asked the (rheto­rical) ques­tion whether all Russians had an ‘impe­rial conscious­ness’. It goes without saying that the answer to this can only be nega­tive: It would be impos­sible to say that all citi­zens of any country, without excep­tion, have the same atti­tude on any issue. Navalny’s second argu­ment was even more telling: if Russia is impe­rial, then Belarus must also be impe­rial, since the attack on Ukraine also origi­nated from Bela­ru­sian soil. The absur­dity of this claim is obvious, since Belarus’s degra­da­tion to a vassal state is a conse­quence of Moscow’s impe­ria­list policy.

It was thus perhaps only logical that Navalny’s team refrained from coll­ec­ting money for Ukraine and continued to focus on the corrup­tion of Putin and his entou­rage and the produc­tion of YouTube videos on this topic. Recently, his widow, who has also been stylised by the media as a heroine, said that the ques­tion of whether Ukraine should receive weapons for its defence was diffi­cult, since these weapons could ulti­m­ately be used against Russians. This is the core of the failure of many promi­nent Russian oppo­si­tion figures in the West: they imagine an inno­cent Russian society that only needs to be freed from Putin, and the demo­cratic and free Russia of the future will begin. This dream of a ‘wonderful Russia of the future’ and the (supposed) Russian victims of the present are the primary reci­pi­ents of their soli­da­rity, and not Ukraine, which is fighting for its very survival. But where is this better Russia supposed to come from, when the majo­rity of those who present them­selves as repre­sen­ta­tives of this Russia not only have no poli­tical influence in their home country, but also show no willing­ness to criti­cise their society? If they are inca­pable of even calling by name the colo­nial violence that charac­te­rises Russian poli­tics and society, past and present?

The Russian oppo­si­tio­nist as martyr

It is striking that such critical analysis of the Russian oppo­si­tion in Germany often trig­gers emotional defen­sive reflexes. The tradi­tional prio­ri­ti­sa­tion of Russian perspec­tives is one reason for this. Another is related to the form of resis­tance of promi­nent Russian oppo­si­tion figures. This form is perso­ni­fied by Navalny, Kara-Murza, and Yashin: all were willing to go to prison for their convic­tions and to pay for stan­ding up for them with their lives. One can draw the moral conclu­sion from this that criti­cising such people is funda­men­tally inap­pro­priate in light of their personal willing­ness to make such sacri­fices. However, from an analy­tical point of view, this would be the end of any critical exami­na­tion of agency in dicta­tor­ships, at least for all those working in demo­cra­cies. Awe-inspired silence and quiet admi­ra­tion would replace analysis. But this would also be the wrong approach from a poli­tical point of view. We would not be doing Russian oppo­si­tion members any favours by bran­ding any criti­cism of their fate as out of place. Only through tough discus­sions is there a chance that some­thing will change in this milieu.

How should the forms of resis­tance that Navalny, Kara-Murza and Yashin against Putin’s regime be inter­preted in the Russian cultural-historical context? Because in these cases it was indeed a choice: Navalny could have stayed in Germany after the poiso­ning attempt on his life, and Kara-Murza, who also has British citi­zen­ship, could have left Russia. The fact that both Kara-Murza and Navalny accepted the – expected – camp detention in Russia and thus their own death also has to do with a tradi­tional Russian, strongly reli­giously charged, model of the regime oppo­nent, who in his resis­tance to power takes on the ordeal of the martyr for the people and draws his moral autho­rity from this act of sacri­fice. Nikolai Klime­niouk has pointed to a second tradi­tion, origi­na­ting from the days of the Soviet dicta­tor­ship, that may explain this decision: the idea that, as an oppo­nent of the regime, you can only remain credible as a poli­tical actor within Russia, even if this means waiting for death or rescue from abroad as a prisoner.

In the case of Kara-Murza and Yashin in parti­cular, the path of sacri­fice had some­thing passive and fata­li­stic about it. After all, after the full-scale Russian inva­sion of Ukraine, there would have been more active and effec­tive forms of resis­tance: joining the Ukrai­nian army, for example (which some Russians, far less well known in the West, did) or using their inter­na­tional cont­acts to lobby for mili­tary support for Ukraine. However, that would have meant brea­king with the Russian cult of martyrdom and, perhaps more importantly, reco­g­nising that the most effec­tive oppo­si­tion to Putin and his regime is not in Russia, but in Ukraine – a country, of all places, that many Russians have tradi­tio­nally treated with colo­nial arrogance.

The quasi-religious cult that has deve­loped around Navalny since his death, in which he appears as a revenant of Jesus Christ, belongs in the context of the older martyr cult. This martyr cult of indi­vi­duals, in turn, has a passive element in which the cult of mour­ning replaces a compre­hen­sive and honest criti­cism of present-day Russian society. But without a critical recko­ning with Russian society this better Russia of the future will simply not come into being. At present, those Russians who both acknow­ledge the respon­si­bi­lity of Russian society and warn against a Navalny cult – the writer Sergei Lebedev is one example – are largely margi­na­lised in the Russian discourse of the anti-Putin camp and are also far less in demand as inter­view part­ners in the West.

The erasure of the expe­ri­ences of the colonised

As under­stan­dable as the longing for a Russia that is diffe­rent from the one curr­ently commit­ting geno­cide in Ukraine may be on an emotional level, this desire is proble­matic. Firstly, it is high time that the West aban­doned its romantic ideas about Russia. The surprised reac­tion of many in the West to Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine is a stark reminder that listening to the wrong people on can have fatal poli­tical conse­quences. Secondly, the persis­tence of cultural hier­ar­chies regar­ding the people and count­ries of Eastern Europe, in which Russia often still occu­pies the top spot, shows that we are still far from a deco­lo­ni­sa­tion of the Western view of Eastern and Central Eastern Europe. For those people in Ukraine, Kazakh­stan, the Baltic count­ries and other count­ries and regions who have expe­ri­enced Russian colo­nia­lism, the uncri­tical glori­fi­ca­tion of many repre­sen­ta­tives of the anti-Putin camp in the West, the igno­ring of their colo­nial mind­sets and their defence of Russia also contains a funda­mental message: Russian perspec­tives are still more important to us than yours.

In the count­ries and regions histo­ri­cally and curr­ently affected by Russian colo­nia­lism, the roman­ti­ciza­tion of Navalny and other promi­nent Russian oppon­ents of Putin cannot be found. On the contrary, the Western adula­tion of indi­vi­duals like Navalny is met with dismay.

We should take the appeals from Russia’s colo­nised count­ries, such as Ukraine, to disen­gage from an uncri­tical roman­ti­cisa­tion of the Russian anti-Putin camp seriously. Perhaps many Germans find it diffi­cult to do so because the perpe­trator perspec­tive is so fami­liar to them due to their own past. Ulti­m­ately, the self-centredness of Russian oppo­si­tion figures, the tendency to see Putin and his clique as the only ones respon­sible and to concep­tua­lise Russian society as a victim rather than as an accom­plice, is strongly remi­nis­cent of West German discourses after 1945. Deco­lo­ni­sing one’s own thin­king can undoub­tedly be a painful process that often directly affects one’s own life – be it in academia, poli­tics or jour­na­lism. Have you over­looked things, had illu­sions, were the heroes of your own life perhaps not beyond reproach as you assumed? But the roman­ti­cisa­tion of Russia, the self-deception about the path the country is taking, the colo­nial arro­gance towards Ukraine, were decisive for the disas­trous Eastern policy of the German govern­ments of the last decades and their compa­ra­tively high social accep­tance. The people of Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and now Ukraine have paid the price for this. We should not repeat this mistake.