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Comment by cyrillite | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

| 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

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.

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

>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?

Matthias Rust?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

> Только синие они и не крапа золота.

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