The answer to the question "Who is Navalny" cannot be unambiguous. As well as the person in question. For some he is just the author of an Internet meme about crooks and thieves, but for others he is a thief himself, because “he stole the whole forest”. For some, he is nothing more than an obscure Internet product, while for others - a modern political knight in shining armor, with two higher educations: legal and economic, plus a person who holds a certificate from the American Yale University in the Yale World Fellows program - Yale's World Partners. For some, this alone can be unconditional compromising evidence, and therefore for them he is a politician, a thief and a troll, and … the main anti-corruptionist in Russia.
Currently, Alexei Navalny has been convicted and is under house arrest, in addition to this, several more criminal cases have been opened against him, some of which are already being considered in court. All these cases have one thing in common: objectively, there is not a single injured party from whom Navalny stole something. Moreover, recently in one of the cases - Yves Rocher - it turned out that his activities brought the company a profit and the company itself has no claims against him. But, of course, he will be convicted, since the Investigative Committee of Russia (RF IC) has "claims" against him. There is no other way. Why is “evil fate” so persecuting one person?
Background
Alexey Navalny entered politics in the early 2000s. He came to the Yabloko party. But in 2007 he was expelled with the wording "for causing political damage to the party, in particular, for nationalist activity."
In fact, Navalny himself never concealed his nationalist views, taking part in the formation and leadership of moderate nationalist movements, rallies and processions. Perhaps, over time, becoming an increasingly popular politician, he only became more careful in his statements, so as not to scare off a possible liberal electorate with such intolerant views. Calling Alexei Navalny an ultranationalist is certainly impossible, and it would never occur to anyone, but … Despite all his political maturation, questions from a small liberal-democratic community, one way or another forming a reputation, about his views on nationalism will remain. They will remain, since the media space contains the foul-smelling pearls that the politician admitted in the early discussions on this topic. At the same time, Navalny has always successfully managed to balance on a fine line between national-democratic and ultra-nationalist views, and just over a year ago he consistently substantiated his nationalist views, expressing in one of the discussions his conviction that nationalism “should become the core of the political system Russia.
History
By the time of Navalny's “parting” with Yabloko, social networking diaries and, most of all, Live Journal had gained popularity on the Internet, where Alexey became one of the most popular bloggers, publishing social and political posts - trolling - about corruption. The post brought him the most popularity, and then the litigation with the Russian state-owned company Transneft in 2008, which he won. It was then that immediately he became tightly "engaged" in the IC of Russia. Moreover, it was in 2008 that Alexei Navalny's political career began to gain momentum: he had numerous sincere supporters who were helping him to wage a difficult fight against Russian corruption free of charge. In the same year, the creation of the "Russian National Movement" was announced, which included the DPNI organizations, "Great Russia" and the movement "People" led by Navalny.
After 2008, Navalny and his supporters exposed the embezzled organizations, banks and companies that cut the country's budget, officials who receive kickbacks for permits for certain activities and enrich themselves at the expense of the working people and the simple middle class, who are simultaneously buying up elite real estate far beyond the borders of Russia, began to take on cosmic proportions. Among those exposed: status "sharks" from VTB Bank and the Investigative Committee of Russia, top managers of monopoly state companies and deputies of the State Duma, and all of them, for the most part, are successful members of the United Russia party.
It was the fact that most of the exposed corrupt officials belonged to the United Russia party and once gave Alexei Navalny the opportunity during a radio broadcast to improvise a phrase that later became a winged and popular Internet meme: “the United Russia party is a party of crooks and thieves,” or in short - PZHiV. To be completely accurate, the popularization of this slogan was unexpectedly helped by a lawyer and also a member of the United Russia Party Shota Gongadze, who obviously had not heard about the "Barbra Streisand effect" and was unfamiliar with the Internet community of trolls.
Modernity
Alexei Navalny is a modern politician, but born in the 70s of the last century and found himself in the old, internet-free political era. Probably, this also allows him to freely orient himself in the sometimes hardened political and economic thinking of politicians of the older generation inhabiting the modern political space of Russia.
Meanwhile, he, like most of the people of his generation, is fluent in new technologies and feels free in the network, where with varying success, but honing his skills even while under house arrest and torn from modern devices, he waged and is waging Internet wars.: with the drain of compromising evidence and the enchantingly successful trolling of trolls who are on the payroll of certain government agencies.
His ability, under constant pressure, both in the virtual and in the real world, which smoothly flow one into another, cannot fail to command respect, to lead and direct both his supporters and those who work directly on projects created by Navalny and his associates: RosPil, RosYama, RosVybory, RosZhKH, Kind Machine of Truth, Anti-Corruption Fund, Progress Party.
In the last two and a half years, the life of the politician Alexei Navalny was extremely eventful: a surge of protest activity in December 2011 raised him to a pedestal as practically the only leader of the protest democratic movement, a trial and conviction by the Kirov court, a real term of five years with a total the regime replaced by a suspended sentence, participation and almost victory in the election of the mayor of Moscow, placement under house arrest, trials in the order of 5-7 criminal cases at the same time, causing sincere bewilderment among both independent experts and the public. Not a single politician of our time - from the beginning of the 90s of the last century to the 10s of the 21st century - was born under such continuously increasing repressive pressure.
The name of Alexei Navalny is gradually becoming a household name, as a person who consistently defends the need for parliamentary rule in Russia, and not authoritarian, as is the case at the present time. The attitude of the authorities to it is a kind of indicator of the level of repressiveness of its thinking and a code signal sent to the democratic-liberal public. How much and when this level will cross the waterline will show in the near future, since any of the strange criminal cases can translate a suspended sentence into a real one. But perhaps then the name of Alexei Navalny will be forced to pronounce the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who has been successfully avoiding it so far.
