Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was always in a hurry.
In 2013, he gave up practicing law to run in the Moscow mayoral election against Putin’s favoured man. Navalny lost yet captured 27% of the vote. He immediately vowed to run again. He was imprisoned twice to deter him from running for the Presidency of Russia, citing Putin’s corrupt regime. Each time he was released, he shot out like a bullet. His spirit wouldn’t allow him to rest on his laurels. Against all advice, he founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation. In 2020 he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and evacuated to Berlin.
Many advised Navalny not to return to Russia for the sake of his life, his family and work—to have the patience to wait for the “right opportunity”. He could not wait. By pausing, he feared being made irrelevant and redundant in his homeland, by his own people. With neither the physical nor monetary power to match Putin’s apparatchiks, he rolled the dice once again, hoping against hope that his presence and personal sacrifice would ignite a revolution.
It’s too early to tell, yet there must be a million armchair pundits whispering, “I told you so”.
I remember another lawyer I met in 1982. Her husband had died recently leaving her wealth enough to power shop every day, dabble in family law for a few hours and return home.
She was in her early thirties. “Stop frittering your life away. Do something worthwhile,” I urged. Unfortunately, she listened to me. Within a decade, she had helped found a political party that eventually won her country’s general election.
At the age of 14, a boy of a single mother learned to drive a car by himself. His purpose? To take his mum to work, then park the car blocks from his school and enter without being noticed. Bit by bit, from part-time construction work to pay his way through university, he built a half-a-billion-dollar real estate empire with a 1,000 employees.
As far as I could tell, neither waited for the “right opportunity” to show up. By sheer will and purpose, they forced that opportunity out into the open.
Like many millions of Russians praying for Navalny’s soul, I hope that he too will have kicked the door open wide enough to inspire others to believe in the impossible.
