Putin’s Catch-22 after murdering Alexey Navalny
What will he do with the body?
Yesterday, Sunday February 18th, I read Masha Gessen’s requiem for the death of Alexey Navalny in The New Yorker with a saddened heart. Until just a few days ago, I thought of both Navalny and Gessen as two of my favorite living Russian journalists because of their steadfast intelligent voices in dark times. But on Friday, Navalny passed through the gates of the living into history. No one was surprised, least of all Masha Gessen. It happened because Navalny dared set foot back in his beloved Russia where he was promptly arrested, sent to prison, and eventually met his end, whereas Gessen will not set foot in Russia anymore because it’s not safe for truth-telling journalists to live there.
Navalny’s murder suggests that Vladimir Putin has grown so pathologically insecure inside his totalitarian regime that he could not find the courage to face an upcoming rigged election with his political opponent and social media foil imprisoned in solitary confinement in a penal colony in the Siberian arctic. Apparently, for Putin to feel totally safe, Navalny had to be dead before the March election that was already on its face a farce for all Russians to see. And for all the world to know. 24 years in power is not enough for a regime grown dangerously murderous and brutal. Putin wants 6 more years in power, at any cost. So sad, because he once-upon-a-time could have left office as a figure writ large in the history books, had he only known when to get off the train.
Now, however, it is too late. Having murdered Navalny and transformed him into a martyr at home in Russia and on the world stage, Putin is now in a Catch-22 over the body of the man he killed. Some reports say Navalny’s body was found bruised in an Arctic hospital morgue, while other reports say no one knows where the body is. But one thing is clear; Navalny’s body is not being handed over to his family.
Saying Putin is in a Catch-22 over Navalny’s body is similar to saying he’s “caught between a rock and a hard place,” or caught “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” The American idiom means finding yourself in a paradoxical situation in which you are trapped with no way to escape—you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Let me explain how it works.
If Putin were to promptly turn over Navalny’s body to his family for a proper funeral, memorial service and burial as his family is demanding, he risks a public funeral procession headed by Navalny’s courageous and equally heroic wife, Yulia Navalnaya, that could easily draw a million sympathizers to the funeral cortege. It could be a specter reminiscent of Cory Aquino‘s funeral procession in the Philippines in 1986 when she paraded her husband Ninoy Aquino’s murdered body in a glass coffin around Manila for the public to witness and grieve, and in so doing launched what was described at the time as “a human tsunami” onto the streets.
Within days, that human tsunami became the People Power Revolution that drove her husband’s executioner—the dictator Ferdinand Marcos—out of power after 20 bloody years of authoritarian reign by terror. Marcos’ dictatorship ended dramatically when Cory Aquino, the wife of his opponent, ran against Marcos for president herself, calling him a “lying dictator” and “evil genius” to his face in front of the public media, and for her fearlessness winning the popular vote in an election that for the first time in 20 years was not rigged. Given the potential for history to repeat itself, I suspect it is fear of a martyred hero’s funeral procession turned victory parade that motivates Putin to hold onto Navalny’s body for dear life, and to have his prosecutor’s office in Moscow announce that any demonstrations in the capital over the death of Navalny are forbidden. In other words, public displays of grief and mourning are outlawed.
However, that is Putin’s Catch-22, because you can’t outlaw grief. If Putin doesn’t turn over Navalny’s body to his family in time for a proper burial, if the martyred hero is not laid to rest in a sacred and honorable way, Navalny’s spirit may hunt him down from beyond the grave. It’s a risk Putin seems willing to take, but it’s one that may come back to haunt him. Because the act of desecrating the body of a dead hero may demystify Putin in the eyes of too many of his own people such that he falls from being ‘President Putin’ or ‘Tsar Putin’ to just a criminal murderer and body snatcher lacking moral compass, willing to act in outrageous disregard for sacred laws about the treatment of those who, at the end of the day, are your own relations. Your brothers. Your own people. Because Navalny, of all the things he was, was Russian through and through from the day he was born until the day he died.
True leaders do not rule by brute force. They rule by right action. In life and death, Alexey Navalny demonstrated that. It’s what made him, and continues to make him, a threat to Putin and his regime.
In my own work as a somatic-emotional therapist and holistic wellness writer, I say over and over to my clients and readers that the emotions are energy that can neither be created nor destroyed but must move. Grief over the loss of Alexey Navalny, grief over the loss of his wisdom and courage and love, must move through each of us to prevent making us sick in our hearts, in our minds and in our bodies. While we await a proper funeral procession to bury the dead and relieve our grief as conscious humans on this planet, let us all take a right action that is within our power to take in order to end the senseless slaughter of the best we humans have to offer ourselves.
Putin’s unjust tyranny, the unjust wars in Ukraine and also in Gaza, the senseless killing of people and laying waste of the land and its natural resources are fueled by our own irresponsible over-consumption of dirty oil and gas. Over-consumption that is also polluting our environment and making so many of us chronically sick. Each of us who has privilege has to face this hard truth about ourselves—that we’ve been greedy for more and more fossil fuels that are poisoning us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And we’ve been willing to put up with tyrants, injustice and violence in ways that have sickened us to the core.
For this reason, I urge you to step back during this time when we need to mourn the dead and take personal responsibility to make this world a safer, saner, kinder place. Take your foot off the gas pedal, or better yet, leave your car parked in the driveway or garage for the next 10 days. Turn your thermostat down two degrees and put on a sweater. Fast to take a break from the constant consumption. Teach yourself the freedom that austerity brings through voluntary restraint in the satisfaction of your own appetites and in refraining from constantly indulging in your own attachments. Do it out of respect for Navalny and what he gave his life for. Do it for yourself and for the people you love and care for. Do it for future generations.
If you don’t understand the connection to dirty gas and oil that I’m referencing, or you don’t believe there are green renewable energy options easily within reach, please educate and inform yourself. Because it’s all connected, and because we’re all in this together. If you want to learn more about liberating yourself from the waste and pain of your own over-consumption, buy my book FAST THERAPY coming in March on Amazon books.
