After Navalny Part 2

March 11, 2024

In February 1992, I interviewed in Moscow a Canadian of Russian-Georgian descent who had opened several computer stores to cash in on Russia’s newly democratic, free, and capitalist incarnation. Instead of opportunity, he found chaos and calamity and left. “My workers lie and steal from me. A manager was murdered for her wallet,” he told me. “This country doesn’t need free enterprise. It needs a psychiatrist on every corner. For generations, these people were ordered to turn in relatives or friends who opposed the government. They are like abused children and have the same symptoms: They don’t trust anyone and are not trustworthy themselves.” Tragically, little has changed. Russians are controlled by the Kremlin and lack enough trust to create a civil society of non-governmental organizations and institutions that can advance their collective interests independent of the State. By contrast, Ukraine had a powerful civil society. In 2004 and 2014, more than one million Ukrainians spontaneously protested for weeks in Kyiv to reject Russia’s influence, corruption, and to join Europe. But this month, only a few thousand Russians paid their respects to martyred Alexei Navalny, and his family had difficulty getting a hearse, church, or cemetery to lay him to rest.