Last Friday, the public learned of the death of Alexei Navalny. He died in a Siberian prison, where he was held ostensibly on charges that included “extremism” but really for his political opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His demise continues a long-standing pattern of Putin’s enemies conveniently dying, a number that now stands at more than 20 since Putin took power in 1999. Others have been shot or tossed out of windows. Navalny himself was among those poisoned, though he survived the attempt in 2020. Now, he supposedly died from “sudden death syndrome” in prison, though few take this official explanation seriously.
Newspapers, magazines, and online forums have been flooded with paeans to his heroism, laments for his death, anger at the tyrant who had him killed, and debates about how the West should approach contemporary Russia.
Navalny said many good things and did many brave ones. Among his best moments was Navalny’s closing remarks at one of his trials in February 2021. There, he gave a sense of the intersection of faith and politics. He showed how a politics shorn of faith empowers tyrants who treat themselves as gods.
In those remarks, Navalny spoke of his Christian faith. He admitted he had once been “a militant atheist.” He noted the ridicule one receives for being a Christian in Russia because of the number of those who do not believe in God. Navalny related how tyrants seek to make believers feel alone, strange, cut off from the rest of humanity. Tyrants must so act because God’s existence undermines their claims to absolute power, their evil that masquerades as justice, and their whims cloaked in the thin veil of law.
Navalny stated how his faith comforted and strengthened him in the face of such tyranny. The tyrant’s political philosophy is founded in lies, lies not just about God but about human nature, family, justice, citizenship, and anything else the distortion of which keeps the despot in command.
In opposition to this evil, Navalny pinpointed his “central political doctrine” as one found in the Gospels. He quoted Matthew 5:6, in which Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” Many understand these words in relation to personal holiness, to a desire to obey God’s commands. Yet, Navalny saw more. He saw a political manifesto that declared how “power lies in truth.”
From finding the truth, Navalny argued, comes other political goods. The truth will set you free from the bonds of indwelling evil and from political strongmen. The truth will enable better provision for the basic needs of life. The truth will ground education, itself a necessity for self-government. And, finally, Navalny saw the truth as helping lead to a quality he said Russians lack but need. He saw what the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, what the Declaration of Independence asserted, and what every human heart ultimately knows: that all we do is aimed toward happiness.
Navalny hungered and thirsted for righteousness more than the average human being. Only a desire for truth of particular intensity could remain in the face of the persecution he faced. Only a belief that the truth ultimately resides in a gracious God could sustain him through prison, poisoning, and torture.
May we learn from his example. May all we who engage in some manifestation of earthly politics set our eyes on a celestial city. May we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” May we hunger and thirst for righteousness day in and day out, pursuing justice for all but especially for the fatherless and the widow. May we trust that the promise is true — that those who, like Navalny, so hunger, who so thirst, one day will be satisfied.
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Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.
