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aerique

I never understood why he went back to Russia.

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It's the Office Space Michael Bolton argument: "Why should I abandon my country? He's the one who sucks."

From a practical point of view it may not be wise, but as a principled decision, it sends a very powerful message.

Thanks, now I've got to watch this ever relevant film again.

Martyrdom.

Navalny calculated that this process would be watched and documented through to the very end. He hoped that might be significant, perhaps even sufficient.

in memoriam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpuBgLBrhfo

> Только синие они и не крапа золота.

He will be forgotten in a week, at least by the West.

Do you remember the guy who flew over Belarus and his plane was redirected to seize him? Any news? I do not even remember his name.

Going back to Russia was a stupid move, he could have had much more visibility from the EU.

Matthias Rust?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

Raman Pratasevich / Roman Protasevich.

He was pardoned by Lukashenka last year, since then there was little news, but this week he showed up in a video stream. I found out in Polish media, was very hard to find an English article about it, found just one:

https://www.txtreport.com/life/2024-02-14-%22i-ve-built-the-...

Lukashenka is not better than Putin, many oppositionists are rotting in prisons, but for some reason (young age?) he let Roman go, probably after some devil's deal.

I can assure you I will never forget the name.

Not all bravery is stupid. When people point to so-called inevitabilities of human character, as Putin and his ilk often do, I'll recall Navalny's name.

I'll also recall the victories that were only possible thanks to people of similar courage. Things looked as helpess for Václav Havel, but without him we wouldn't have had the Velvet Revolution.

I remember their names.

Imagine what these people could have done if they weren't at this point... just names that few, even of many few will remember. Ask the same question in a decade.

Thanks for this.

>Do you remember the guy who flew over Belarus and his plane was redirected to seize him? Any news? I do not even remember his name.

Prigozhin, technically?

| He will be forgotten in a week, at least by the West.

He wasn't doing that for the amusement of the West; he was doing it for the Russians.

Sadly it will have as much of an impact on the Russians as any political martyr in any past dictatorship. And that is, almost certainly nothing.

Maybe, but maybe not. Once there was a young man who became a martyr under an autocratic and bloodthirsty regime, this young man's name was Alexander Lenin. Although his death was not circulated in the newspapers, or widely known by many, there was one man who was changed by his death, his brother Vladamir, and his brother Vladmir did quite a bit to change the course of Russian history.

"Vladmir did quite a bit to change the course of Russian history"... for worse.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

In the Baltics at least people are still talking about Protasevich. There are other countries in the West besides the US.

Yes. Unfortunately, he miscalculated and threw his life away by failing to appreciate the conditions. Similar to standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, this was and now proved to be a ineffective and futile act in a country whose populace refuses to stand up to Putin, oppression, or corruption. It's likely Putin will continue to be the de facto "elected" dictator of Russia until he dies and his oligarch pals replace him with someone equally terrible. The Russian people lack the will, organization, and moral courage to overthrow their klepto-plutocrat dictator.

> The Russian people lack the will, organization, and moral courage to overthrow their klepto-plutocrat dictator.

They lack secure communication tools in the first place. I believe Telegram is backdoored by FSB and Whatsapp just bent over without fight.

In what way did WhatsApp bend over?

They provided data on request. We can never know for sure how much. Another fresh data:

https://archive.is/xGihD

To Russians, it’s always someone else who is responsible. The will, organisation, and moral courage come first. Lack of secure communication comes after that.

If Russians had any of that, they won’t even need the communication means in the first place, to overthrow their dictator. When there’s a mass of people enough to fight the regime, the regime won’t even fight. They only fight the battles they believe they can easily win.

The truth is, Russians are, en masse, don’t care or even support all that. Those folks aren’t on Hacker News, they aren’t in any English-speaking communities as well. They barely speak even their own (complicated enough) language.

The so-called ‘liberal’ Russians try to persuade us that Russians en-masse don’t support all that, ’Putin’s war‘ they say [1], etc. But there are literally hundreds of thousands of Russian fight against Ukraine right now, and there are 400,000 dead [2]. They are Russians, aren’t they? Russians have the very long history of wars they started on their neighbours.

Is it Telegram being (possibly) backdoored or lack of Signal being too popular among Russians that stops them from growing in-house dictators and other murderers?

[1] As a very simple illustration, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39395697

[2] You may need a translator for this, casualties is the first number: https://www.mil.gov.ua/news/2024/02/16/za-dobu-sili-oboroni-...

> When there’s a mass of people enough to fight the regime,

To get the mass to act together requires clean comms. Dirty comms result in eliminating (jailing) of activists before they organise.

And don't forget no free press for 22 years.

As if Russians cared.

Most don’t but neither would you if you had all your info from TV box for 20 years.

Oh yeah, as if Russians were very very different before the TV box was invented. They always home brew despotic tsars. E.g Ivan Grozny aka The Terrible [1] was long before the TV, and it’s not the one and the only example, just the famous one.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible

A million tank men may be needed to topple stupidity. China will undergo major change this next century as they shrink 500,000,000 in population, and their system will inevitably change during this time. Hopefully for the better - maybe Tank Man was a necessary seed.

And now it was used by putin to overshadow ukraine-maidan day. The message is clear. Ukraine is just sideshow, murdered oppossition in mainland, is main-show.

I have held the exact same question. I don't say this lightly. His decision was stupid. He would've been much more effective as a critic with a Twitter account. You can't criticize the government when you're not free to do so.

Have you heard the metaphor of the chicken and the pig at breakfast time?

I could probably stand in the Krasnaya Ploshchad and yell "Vladimir Zelenskiy Sucks!" without repercussion, but that wouldn't make it effective criticism.

Why didn't you say Red Square instead of, in an English sentence, dropping in a Russian adjective and Russian noun?

  1. it's only a copy, paste, and click to get to Red Square
  2. it fits with the .ru transliteration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy
  3. it retains any original ambiguity between "red" and "beautiful"
  4. it avoids confusing the Union with the Federation
  5. it complies with dang's suggestion not to overly spoon-feed each other

EDIT: in other news: https://www.theonion.com/putin-distraught-over-friends-who-k...

I should say I got it of course, but not sure others in general would.

I had double checked that (1) worked before including it, and for that matter, even untransliterated « красная площадь » gives me "Red Square, Moscow, Russia, 109012" above the fold when using the most popular search engine.

Strategy is what gets results, not metaphors. Examples of effective criticism with government-toppling results can be seen in the Arab Spring movement.

How has the Arab Spring been working out?

Toppling governments doesn't do much good if no one manages to provide effective replacements running on new lines afterwards. See also Reconstruction in the US, or the CIS/CSTO/etc. in the former Soviet Union.

It seems stupid, yes. However he would've been hunted the remainder of his life and likely assassinated, regardless. He may have hoped too that by sacrificing himself, he would keep his family safe.

I don't have that strong of a will to give myself over to Putin the way he did. Navalny is immensely brave and principled and while his sacrifice ultimately will likely end in vein, I hope beyond hope that it inspires and motivates those in Russia who prefer Putin be eliminated from power. Time will tell.

why would russians care about what some twitter boy happily living in EU has to say?

Reminder that Americans voted trump in pretty much based off social media and TV presence, bluster, and Trump "supporting" each voter's individual brands racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.

Are you suggesting Navalny could win through the social media?

Russia really tightened control over its part of the internet. If you are a normal russian citizen you can't visit twitter or instagram or linkedin, you need to know what a VPN is first and also you need to install it.

Still probably better than Iran. (I assume) in Iran some websites are blocked by iranian government and some (dockerhub, github) are blocked by US government.

What makes you think that he would not have been killed in a foreign country?

Why stand in front of a tank?

A brilliant response. Why do anything at one's own expense that could possibly help hundreds of millions?

Today was predictable, but that only accentuates Navalny's bravery. He knew persecution was highly likely, and he did not flinch.

Mahatma Gandhi doesn't work when the tools of the apparatchik and the people aren't with you, or when the dominant force is unreasonable and disrespects the rule of law.

I'd prefer to stay in the back where it's more vulnerable. 100m away from it with a tandem AT weapon ready. But honestly we can't always get what we want.

The reason most people have even heard of Navalny is because he went back to Russia. That move is what caused the western media to pick up the story and run it on the news for months on end. The imagery it produced, videos of him leaving the plane, saying goodbye to his wife, getting arrested, standing trial, were what catapulted the wests exposure to the opposition movement in Russia. It was an incredibly well played calculated move that unfortunately did not pay off because that coward Putin has his finger on the mobile oppression palace 24/7.

Certainly nobody wants to be a martyr. I guess he thought he had a chance at peaceful politics, and at the time it could have been seen as reasonable by a poor planner like him. He had a history of weird blunders, like refusing to resort to violence when it became the only possible solution, or failing the publicly planned protest simply because he didn't account for being detained under a bullshit pretext for a few hours.

> Certainly nobody wants to be a martyr.

Some people do. If you believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and you truly believe your death will significantly help others, then maybe you do make that (incredibly hard) decision knowing full well the consequences.

That's the reason why we have Russia we know today and I'm afraid that we'll see more countries taking this path in coming years. Almost million russians left country during last two years alone. But if everyone against regime leaves, who have to fight for better country? Or do you really think that it's more effective to shout in Twitter?

> Almost million russians left country during last two years alone

What is this even supposed to mean?

For reference, 516,000 Germans left their country during the last 2 years [1] and Germany’s population is roughly 60% the size of that of Russia’s

[1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...

Specifically, he believed he should share in his country's suffering.

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