It’s a thoroughly misguided practice to write farewell-style posts before a verdict. Not only can there be many verdicts in our current reality, while genuinely good thoughts don’t come to mind all that often, but also, as I wrote last time, all your rhetoric is instantly deflated if the case ends relatively well and there are no dramatic touches like handcuffs and a prison escort.
The title is a problem too. “Verdict 2” sounds like the name of a flop movie; by the laws of sequels, this really ought to have a subtitle or an expanded title. Not “The Mummy 2,” but “The Mummy Returns.”
Given the circumstances (it seemed there were still two weeks to spare, and now there aren’t), I’m not going to write anything elaborate here. I’ll spend the time saved with my family. I reread my previous post (“Mummy 1”), and everything in it still stands—there’s nothing to add. The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) knows what to do. The “Progress Party” will keep pushing to take part in elections. We’ve discussed every possible isolation scenario a hundred times.
Two things deserve everyone’s attention at a moment when, because of circumstances, my words may seem more significant:
Don’t speculate, make predictions, or base your actions on this particular verdict. - What if it’s ten years? - What if it’s not ten, but two? Whew... that’s different. - What if it’s five, but with house arrest until the appeal, and then maybe a suspended sentence? Whew... that’s different. - What if this, what if that. What difference does it make? Even if tomorrow’s verdict is to send me away for 10 days to a “luxury” room in a health resort with five meals a day, what exactly changes for you?
We can’t predict how events will unfold, but we know one thing for certain: the very existence of such scenarios—and of the vile, despicable people writing them—is absolutely unacceptable to us.
Defending one specific person, or a specific pair of brothers, cannot be the reason and purpose of political struggle. Or at least it cannot be the only reason. Government that can be changed through fair elections, an independent judiciary, the fight against corruption, no censorship in the media, and a fair and transparent distribution of oil and gas revenues—that is what all this is for.
The issue is not the verdict against the Navalnys, but the fact that verdicts are being handed down by two or three—maybe even just one—crooked billionaire sitting in the Kremlin, each of whom ought to be on trial himself.
In other words, this is about the bigger picture, not an individual case. And at the same time, it is about your own future, not the Navalnys’.
People always say in situations like this: they’re afraid; they’re acting out of weakness. That idea gets repeated so often that no one really thinks it through anymore. But it matters.
Would they pull these kinds of unexpected tricks—rescheduling and pre-New Year announcements—for verdicts involving people like Serdyukov, Yakunin, or Sechin (prominent Russian officials and state-linked elites)? Only if the goal were to hold back jubilant crowds pouring into the streets to celebrate the start of a real fight against corruption.
It is precisely from there, from the Kremlin, that one can best see how flimsy this structure is—“Putin’s petrostate Russia.” It survives solely (and here, forgive me, I’m partly repeating “Mummy 1”) on the passivity, lack of self-belief, and lack of coordination among the educated and active part of society.
“You can’t break a whip with the butt of an axe” (a Russian proverb meaning you can’t overcome entrenched force), “The whole people would have to rise up—and what can we do?” All of that.
The people—all the people, the population as a whole—never rise up on their own. They follow the active part of society, and they will follow us just fine, because they want honest courts, a fight against corruption, and a fair distribution of oil and gas revenues just as much as we do.
So the main conceptual image for this post has not changed since last time, and it could not have changed. It is an image about the history of humanity:
I’ll end with a quote I love and believe in: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”