
Mourners gathered in various cities in the Caucasus on March 1 to pay tribute to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died suddenly last month in an Arctic prison colony. The memorial gatherings were coordinated by Navalny’s team to coincide with his funeral earlier in the day in Moscow attended by thousands.
Representatives of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the entity founded by Navalny, directed people where to gather in cities in Armenia and Georgia, including Yerevan, Gyumri, Tbilisi and Batumi.
In Tbilisi, a group of roughly 200 mostly Russian emigres assembled in the evening on Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue in front of the Russian Embassy, a Eurasianet reporter estimated. Many wiped away tears and embraced each other as a steady stream of mourners placed flowers at a makeshift memorial in front of the embassy.
Leonid Vishnya, an 18-year-old filmmaker who recently moved to Tbilisi after finishing school, was among the attendees. Navalny’s death under suspicious circumstances was a watershed moment for him personally because it eliminated any possibility of returning to his homeland, he said.
“Before Navalny’s death, I was like, ‘I live here, I’m safe here, but I can go back to Russia if I want to,” he said. “[Now] I’m not going back because I won’t feel safe there anymore.”
While the main goal of the gathering was to memorialize the death of a man who for years represented anti-Putinism among Russians, thoughts among mourners drifted inevitably to the future of the Russian opposition.
“I admire his courage [in returning to Russia],” said Kirill Ivanov, 28, an English teacher who came to Tbilisi six months ago. “On the other hand, his incarceration and eventual murder dealt a pretty severe blow to the future of the Russian opposition in my view.”
“Not all hope is lost,” he added, “but it is pretty grim.”
Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, announced in the days after his death that she would continue her late husband’s fight for a free Russia, and for many, she has already become a leading symbol of the Russian opposition.
“I am very much inspired by Yulia Navalny’s example, because of course I cannot imagine what she has going on inside her right now,” Alexander Sofeyev, a Tbilisi-based artist, activist, and member of the Pussy Riot performance art collective, told Eurasianet prior to the March 1 memorial. He added that her decision to speak out and continue her husband’s cause was an example for others. “It is not even possible to say that you have given up,” he said. “It’s impossible to give up.”
Brawley Benson is a Tbilisi-based reporter and recent graduate of the Columbia Journalism School who writes about Russia and the countries around it. Follow him on X at @BrawleyEric.
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