I recently read their memoirs:
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Oak and the Calf
- Alexei Navalny: Patriot: A Memoir
Navalny makes the point that the Soviet regime, which persecuted Solzhenitsyn, was worse than Putin's oligarchy. Yet Navalny was the one to die in prison.
One could argue that it was his own fault. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt through poisoning, he returned to his homeland. He didn't have to. But he was in no way at fault. His death was the fault of the regime that poisoned him, imprisoned him, killed him.
I reread The Oak and the Calf because I remembered a reference to "conservatives" in the government who did not want to allow publication of Solzhenitsyn's books. This struck me at the time as strange, because I thought of Communists as left-wing, which is another word for liberal, which has commonly been thought of as the opposite to conservative. In his memoir, I think, Solzhenitsyn uses the "conservative" label for stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies who wouldn't change their ways rather than as an indication of their political ideology. But Navalny too accuses Russian Communists (after the Soviet Union) of being "more conservative than even the American right" (p. 186).
Solzhenitsyn's title is from a Russian proverb about a young calf head-butting an oak tree, presumably with some delusions of winning the battle.
In America, we like to think President Reagan brought on the fall of the Soviet empire. I'm pretty sure Solzhenitsyn was even more responsible: the oak fell. And he was rewarded with the opportunity to return home. His assessment, too, was that Putin's regime was better than the Soviet era. I suspect that even now, after the imprisonment and murder of a man whose efforts were so like his own, Solzhenitsyn would still prefer Putin to the USSR. But I expect he would be outraged and would speak up. Or would he be more "conservative"?
Navalny's memoir is more relevant than that of his predecessor. The iron fist now wears a glove, but it is still ruthless and it has more propaganda tools than ever. "In the twenty-first century you are confronted not just by the machinery of a repressive state but by the PR machinery of that state." (p 138) "Propagandists," he says, "create a public opinion that no longer simply enables Putin to commit war crimes but demands them." (p. 430)
The courage of one man to speak up against a corrupt government and against its stupid, unjust war against Ukraine is an inspiration. We should all aspire to his persistence, determination, fearlessness, patience, faith, and humor.
Buy Navalny's book. Support his widow and his children made fatherless by Putin. A simple purchase can be another piece of the puzzle of describing and protesting autocracy.
Our country is not as far gone as Putin's vast fiefdom, but not for lack of trying by the current administration. There are too many similarities. Shutting down and shutting up the opposition is reaching new heights in the land of the free. Let's learn from dissidents and at least remain the home of the brave.