The Beautiful Russia of the Future: Survival Russian in Wartime

ALEXEI NAVALNY'S LEXICAL LEGACY

In a first since the Cold War, on August 1, 2024, Russia exchanged political prisoners for an assortment of spies and one hacker in custody in the West. Sixteen well-known members of the Russian opposition – many of whom thought that they would die in prison – are now free. However, a dark cloud hung over this joyous event: Alexei Navalny, who would have been at the top of any list of political prisoners to be exchanged, haven’t lived to see the day. This edition of Survival Russian in Wartime is dedicated to him and to the more than one thousand political prisoners suffering in Russian prisons.

The media have labeled this exchange “сде́лка и́мени Нава́льного” (“the Navalny deal”), one of the many words and expressions tied to the murdered politician that the Russian language has generated in response to political and military developments. Let’s take a look.

ПРЕКРА́СНАЯ РОССИ́Я БУ́ДУЩЕГО

This phrase "the beautiful Russia of the future" is central to Navalny’s vision. It gained traction in 2017, when it became the unofficial slogan of Navalny’s presidential campaign. He used it in talking about the new Russia he wanted to help create: a country with personal liberty, a functioning legal system, and no corruption.

The slogan is not so much a political promise as an expression of the faith that such a beautiful future would sooner or later arrive. That prospect has always looked far-fetched, and debates over whether it is even achievable have become increasingly painful for Russians who share Navalny’s democratic values. A truly free Russian state has never existed. The supposedly free 1990s (or to be precise, the first years of that decade) now look like the exception that proves the rule: that the Russian Empire is a state formation built on tyranny. So far no one has succeeded in governing it without oppressing its population.

Navalny nevertheless continued to believe in this alternative vision of Russia’s future and spoke of the beautiful Russia of the future until the end of his life – even after the 2022 invasion, even as an emaciated prisoner who was being slowly murdered before the eyes of the country and world. His death seemed to mark the end of any hope for change. In a speech commemorating Navalny, the popular political commentator Ekaterina Schulmann noted that everyone sharing memories of him kept using the words наде́жда and бу́дущее (hope and future). But with his death a painful apprehension descended on all anti-Putin Russians – even those who were not fans of Navalny: that both the hope and the future had been buried along with him.

Today, the expression “the beautiful Russia of the future” lives on as a melancholy meme more likely to be used with a dejected smirk than any sort of optimism. Maybe someday that will change.

There are other lofty phrases closely associated with Navalny, for example, зло – э́то безде́йствие добра́ (evil is the inaction of goodness), “любо́вь сильне́е стра́ха” (love is stronger than fear) and  “я не бою́сь и вы не бо́йтесь” (I’m not afraid and you shouldn’t be either). While he was still alive, these sayings might have seemed naïve and populist, but now they go straight to the heart. Russians throughout the world flocked to demonstrations held in his memory holding signs bearing these sayings.

НЕ У́МЕР А УБИ́ЛИ

Among the Navalny-related phrases that have entered the oppositionist lexicon, this phrase "he didn’t die, they killed him" is the most telling, since the verb you use expresses your political position with crystal clarity. The difference between “Alexei Navalny died in a penal colony” and “Alexei Navalny was killed in a penal colony” is roughly analogous to the difference between using the term “СВО” ( специа́льная вое́нная опера́ция or special military operation) and the more straightforward  “война́” (war) or using “присоедине́ние Кры́ма” (the incorporation of Crimea) instead of “анне́ксия  Кры́ма” (the annexation of Crimea).

Several explanations and euphemisms have been used by Russian media propagandists in discussions of Navalny’s death. One absurdity bandied about in the process is the nonsensical quasi-medical formulation “синдро́м внеза́пной сме́рти” (sudden death syndrome). There has also been talk of an “оторва́вшийся тромб” (a blood clot breaking loose), to which Дворец словосочетания (Palace of Collocations, an Instagram page dedicated to combining simple graphics with clever word play: @dvoretz) responded with the meme “кто-то там оторва́лся” (someone let loose there). The phrase plays on the double meaning of the verb “оторва́ться,” which can also mean to “let loose” in the sense of “having a good time” or “going to town.” On one hand, this wordplay succeeds in mocking the incoherence and groundlessness of the blood clot theory while also unambiguously asserting that a crime has been committed: Putin murdered Navalny, finally indulging a desire that had been eating away at him for a long time: he finally “really let loose.”

But the most common way people have been expressing their outrage is the simple phrase “не умер а убили.” And even now, so many months later, if you say these words without mentioning the name of the victim, anyone would get the reference.

ЖУЛИ́КИ И ВО́РЫ, ПЯТЬ МИНУ́Т НА СБО́РЫ!

Of course, most of Navalny’s lexical contributions come from his anti-corruption activism, which included investigations and efforts to educate the public. For example, “Он вам не Димо́н!” – the name of his documentary about the vast, ill-gotten gains of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s placeholder president from 2008-2012 – became an immediate catchphrase. It often comes up in connection with the despicable statements of this much reviled politician, his main contribution to the war effort. (The title is alternately translated as He’s Not Dimon to You and Don’t Call Him Dimon and can be found on YouTube with English subtitles.) In March of 2017, the documentary’s release sent indignant Russians out onto the streets in protest. One symbol used during the demonstration was the “ уто́чка Медве́дева” (Medvedev’s – often rubber – duckie), a reference to a special house built for ducks on an island at the ex-president’s lavish, out-of-town residence shown in the film.

Another Navalny exposé, “Дворец для Путина” (Putin’s Palace, also subtitled on YouTube), produced numerous memes, including  “склад гря́зи” (mud warehouse) and “аквадискоте́ка” (aqua-discotheque). In producing this documentary about Putin’s magnificent complex, outside the resort town of Gelendzhik on the southern Black Sea coast, Navalny’s ФБК (Фонд  борьбы́ с корру́пцией or Anti-Corruption Foundation) managed to get its hands on the complex’s architectural plans, which used these terms for these unusual amenities. Their exact purpose isn’t clear (especially the mud warehouse), so these two terms immediately came to symbolize the outlandish extravagance of Putin’s estate and his crass attempts at mimicking the décor of Europe's Age of Absolutism rulers.

And, of course, everyone remembers “Жу́лики и во́ры, пять мину́т на сбо́ры!” "crooks and thieves, five minutes to gather your things," a chant first heard during the protests of 2011. “Па́ртия жу́ликов и воро́в” (the party of crooks and thieves) is an epithet of contempt for Putin’s Еди́ная Росси́я (United Russia) party that caught on when Navalny started using it, and “пять минут на сборы” expressed the wistful thought that corrupt bloodsuckers had better make themselves scarce, and fast.

“Пять минут на сборы” is a rather crude and antagonistic expression, better befitting soccer hooligans than your typical pro-democracy protester, not all of whom were comfortable with such stylistics. But today the expression reminds us not only of recent history but of Alexei Navalny himself. He was a pugnacious rhetorician, able to rouse a crowd and send a rush of adrenaline shooting through a demonstration, turning a protest gathering into an adventure story with a thought-provoking plot.

ПО́ЛДЕНЬ ПРО́ТИВ ПУ́ТИНА

Impressively and importantly, Navalny remained an unwavering optimist until the very end, or at least he succeeded in creating that impression. In rare appearances at legal proceedings (via video link from his places of incarceration), he looked emaciated and greatly changed, but he continued to encourage his supporters and poke fun at his tormentors.

One of the final acts of protest he organized, generating what was probably the last phrase he contributed to the Russian language, was По́лдень про́тив Пу́тина (Noon against Putin). In January 2024, one month before his death, Navalny called on anti-Putin Russians to express their opposition to the regime in an original way: by voting in the sham presidential elections, which took place over three days in mid-March, at exactly noon on March 17. Since none of the candidates allowed to run represented a palatable choice for many Russians, and since political protest was banned, Navalny proposed this mass action as a safe and lawful form of protest. Beyond that, what you did with your ballot was your business. The idea itself belonged to Maxim Reznik, a former member of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly living in exile, and was being supported by many well-known members of the opposition, including the activist Yulia Galyamina, who was being threatened with criminal prosecution if she organized any demonstrations.

Nevertheless, many Russians participated in Noon against Putin, but by that time Navalny had been dead for a month. The opposition was feeling exceptionally distraught at that point, and for them, coming together that noon was a way of expressing solidarity with one another, fully recognizing that the action would have no real political impact. But the idea and name of Noon against Putin left a clear imprint. Furthermore, the event’s very name has metaphysical overtones. Putin had become a symbol of absolute evil against which an inviolable natural force was rising up: the sky, noon, and life itself.

This was not the first time Navalny had urged his compatriots to take a creative approach to rigged elections. Another of his well-known initiatives was “у́мное голосова́ние” (smart voting). The strategy involved identifying a single preferred candidate in regional and federal elections so that anti-Putin voters could concentrate their votes on that candidate to ensure the maximum impact possible.

КРЫМ – Э́ТО НЕ БУТЕРБРО́Д

It should be noted that far from all the catchphrases that Navalny generated were above reproach. The nationalistic flourishes evident in his early rhetoric damaged his reputation within liberal circles. As time went on, he was able to demonstrate his ability to evolve and move toward a more tolerant inclusivity, but he has always had a strong right-wing following.

Russia’s takeover of Crimea put politicians like Navalny to the test. The Russian public’s clear-cut feelings about the longstanding question “чей Крым?” (To whom does Crimea belong?) – in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea – put opposition leaders in a bind. The answer “Ukraine” would alienate them from the electoral majority, while saying that Crimea should be Russian would mar their reputations with pro-Western democrats. When this question was put to Navalny, he replied that Crimea belongs to the people who live there, a slightly sanitized way of saying that, in essence, “Crimea belongs to us Russians.” He added that if he became president, he would not immediately return the peninsula to Ukraine, since “Крым – э́то что, бутербро́д с колбасо́й, что́бы его́ туда-сюда́ возвраща́ть?” (Crimea is what? A sausage sandwich you can pass back and forth?) A shortened version of that statement gained currency, summing up both Navalny’s view on the subject and his attempt to avoid giving a direct answer: “Крым э́то не бутербро́д” (Crimea isn’t a sandwich).

After he was killed, it was this phrase, rather than the antiwar propaganda that Navalny energetically conducted until his dying day, that became decisive for Ukrainians. “Нам тут есть, кого́ опла́кивать, и вообще́ Крым – э́то не бутербро́д, не так ли?” (We have plenty of people to shed tears over, and generally “Crimea isn’t a sandwich, right?”) is approximately how they feel about the idea that they should share the Russian opposition’s grief over Navalny’s death.

НАВАЛЬНИ́СТЫ И НАВАЛЬНЯ́ТА

These words – Navalnists, Little Navalnists (-ята being a suffix denoting the young of a species) – are the derogatory terms pro-Putin propagandists use to refer to the late politician’s supporters. Among зед-патрио́ты (Z-prowar patriots), the phrase “A Navalnist is not a human” is popular. The second term (навальнёнок in the singular), used for the politician’s young supporters, sounds quite ageist. It makes Navalny’s young supporters – university students or even high schoolers – sound childish. It was important for the authorities to make fun of and belittle the fact that Navalny was able to attract, not just his peers and not only oppositionists who experienced the Soviet-era dissident movement, but the most important demographic: young people. “Навальня́та, ма́мкины революционе́ры” (Little Navalnists, Mama’s little revolutionaries) tries to cast these young followers as immature people still under the influence of their elders and incapable of understanding what they are getting themselves into. There are other, less well-known variations on these terms: поднавальня́та (the prefix под- primarily means “under,” suggesting people being manipulated and lacking minds of their own); нахальня́та (a play on the similarity between Нава́льный and the word наха́льный or impudent); and карнавальня́та (from the Russian cognate for “carnival,” in other words unserious young hipsters just looking for some fun).

The good news is that, although Alexei Navalny is no longer with us, the навальни́сты and навальня́та are still here. It is difficult to say how many there really are and what they will be able to change, but, at a time when it is hard to find any cause for hope, the fact that they live on, at least in the wartime lexicon, gives us a glimmer.

– Illustrations by Jane Doe