Sergei Lebedev is a Russian poet, essayist and journalist. This piece is adapted from an essay, translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis, in the summer 2024 issue of Liberties , a journal of culture and politics.
Alexei Navalny was killed in the far north, above the Arctic Circle, in the Russian village of Kharp, where the Ural Mountains are intersected by a railroad leading to the town of Labytnangi on the Ob River. This place of death, this scene of the crime, is not random. It puts a period to the argument with fate that Navalny led as a man and a politician — even, one could say, to his argument with Russia and its history.
The man who came up with the “beautiful Russia of the future” as an image and a slogan died in the horrible Russia of the past..
