Alexei Navalny didn’t just defy Putin—he showed up his depravity

HE WAS JUST an ordinary fellow. Nothing remarkable about him. He was Everyman, every Russian; one of the hundreds of thousands whose voices were usually stifled. His speeches weren’t full of literary quotes or references to history. Instead he liked to sit down with people and talk about what worried them: health care, schools, the price of bread. He was no philosopher, just a jobbing lawyer, turned obsessive blogger, turned leading opponent of Vladimir Putin and his regime of crooks and thieves. He resisted everything they stood for: cronyism, greed, moral rot. For that he knew he would be endlessly harassed, imprisoned and silenced. Killed, possibly. But Alexei Navalny was not afraid of death. He often talked as if he had died already, and got over it.