As might have been expected, Alexey Navalny has his detractors on the
left. Jacobin published an article by Alexey Sakhnin and Per Leander
titled “Russia’s Trump
<https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/alexey-navalny-putin-opposition-movement-trump>”
that dismissed his intrepid campaigns against corruption. For the
authors, he was trying to “drain the swamp” just like Donald Trump.
Sakhnin, who was active in the Left Front in Russia before emigrating to
Sweden, followed up with a new screed on Jacobin titled “How a Russian
Nationalist Named Alexei Navalny Became a Liberal Hero
<https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/alexei-navalny-russia-protests-putin>”
that facilely attempted to explain away Navalny’s support for Bernie
Sanders in the last election rather than Trump. He saw it as a cynical,
Machiavellian maneuver rather than a sincere attempt to address social
equality in Russia:
From the protest rallies of 2011-13, Navalny learned an important
lesson: it is not right-wing nationalist, but left-wing, social
populism that brings real popularity among the people. And although
he has often been compared to Donald Trump, he has increasingly
turned to a social agenda.
You’ll note the use of passive voice. He has often been compared to
Donald Trump? No, comrade Sakhnin, it was you who made such a
comparison, wasn’t it?
When I was doing some background research on this article, Sakhnin did
not even appear on my radar screen. Instead, I looked for articles in
the London Review of Books andLeftEast
<https://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/>, where a less conspiratorial
mindset prevailed. From the LRB, I tracked down two articles by Tony
Wood, who has written some great analysis of Putin’s Russia, includinga
book
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/28/putin-and-russias-turn-to-capitalism/>I
reviewed for CounterPunch in 2018. As for LeftEast, a ‘zine published by
Eastern European Marxists, I was particularly interested in what Kirill
Medvedev had to say in a roundtable discussion titled “Navalny’s Return
and Left Strategy
<https://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/navalnys-return-and-left-strategy/>”.
https://louisproyect.org/2021/02/03/navalny-and-the-left/
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