ALEXEI NAVALNY: A RUSSIAN HERO “‘I cannot run away. Not one of us has the right to be neutral.’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323368704578591542588035514.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
As part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent, Russian prosecutors on Friday demanded a six-year prison term on trumped-up embezzlement charges for Alexei Navalny. In a passionate, nine-minute closing speech before the court in the provincial center of Kirov and a live Internet audience, the 37-year-old Mr. Navalny showed why he has become the leader of Russia’s opposition to autocratic President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader, testifies in the court in Kirov, Russia on Monday, June 17, 2013.
Wearing a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, the lawyer and anti-corruption blogger said that this and other show trials won’t hinder the opposition from doing “everything possible to destroy this feudal regime that is being established in Russia” by a clique of officials and businessman close to Mr. Putin.
Among organizers of last year’s large anti-government protests, Mr. Navalny stands out for his common touch and charisma. (See our March 3, 2012 Weekend Interview, “The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most.”) During the past 15 years of an oil and gas boom in Russia, he said on Friday, “You all know the one product that since Soviet times has become more affordable: It’s vodka. This is why the only thing that is guaranteed to all of us is degradation and drinking ourselves to death.”
When Mr. Putin took the presidency in May 2012 after a spell as prime minister, the Kremlin put down the protest movement by arresting its leaders and adopting draconian new laws. Mr. Navalny, who has little access to media, used his trial as a public forum.
“If somebody thinks that having heard the threat of this six-year imprisonment I would run away abroad or hide somewhere, they are badly mistaken. I cannot run away from myself. I have no other option and I don’t want to do anything else,” Mr. Navalny said, pointing at the audience. “Not one of us has the right to be neutral. Not one of us has the right to shirk from doing what’s necessary to make our world better. Each time someone thinks, ‘Why don’t I step aside and simply everything will happen without me and I’ll wait?’ he only helps this disgusting feudal regime that sits like a spider in the Kremlin.
“There are, in any case, more of us. There are hundreds of thousands, millions of us. . . . This cannot last forever, that the 140 million-strong people of one of the biggest and one of the richest countries in the world are subjugated to a handful of bastards who are nothing. This is nonsense, and this nonsense will be ended through our struggle.”
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