It is a kind of freedom in an unfree country to behave as if the secret police does not exist. That has been the strength of Alexei Navalny, the only credible opponent to President Putin. Despite the truncheon blows and rigged court cases, the 41-year-old dissident steers demonstrations, calls for election boycotts and releases barbed exposés of government corruption on social media. Many in Russia consider him irrational since there is little doubt that Mr Putin will be re-elected on March 18. Yet Mr Navalny insists on making the point that even a kleptocratic regime has to be held accountable if not in the courts then on the streets.
Yesterday, as the opposition began its election campaign with peaceful protests across Russia, Mr Navalny was duly arrested. He was later released pending charges, but the Kremlin narrative remains unchanged. It is that Mr Navalny has been disqualified from standing for election because he has a criminal record. He says that his convictions in two financial crimes cases were engineered by Moscow to punish him for his opposition activity and ensure that he cannot run. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Russian authorities have violated his right to free assembly and unlawfully detained him at least seven times.
If Mr Putin were as confident of victory as he pretends he would stop this campaign of harassment and let Mr Navalny stand. Most opinion polls, albeit published in state-run media, give the Russian leader an 80 per cent popularity rating. Even Mr Navalny admits the president is a shoo-in and that he will probably end up ruling longer than Joseph Stalin. Perhaps Mr Putin is anxious about another survey, a sampling of 4,000 people by the Institute of Sociology in Moscow, which found that for the first time since 2003 a majority now favours change over “stability”.
Today that supposed stability has translated into social stagnation. After 18 years of Putinism, the country’s political process has all the verve of the Novodevichy cemetery.
It is no triumph to rule over a forcibly becalmed people. Mr Putin has yet to come up with an election programme. There are hints of a readiness to make some kind of peace in Ukraine and rebuild relations with the West to ease sanctions. But even this suggests that the president is more concerned with enriching his courtiers than improving the lot of the Russian people.
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The core issues are those being addressed by Mr Navalny. In unashamedly populist style, he has highlighted the feathered lifestyle of the oligarchs, promising “hospitals and roads instead of palaces for officials”. Uprooting corruption, he says, will free up cash for education and healthcare. Courts will become more independent, media given more freedom, safeguards introduced for competitive elections. There will, he promises, be a generous minimum wage and subsidised loans to allow more young people to buy homes.
The programme may not be realistic but it addresses the concerns of the middle class — the garage owners who are fed up with paying bribes, the entrepreneurs squeezed out by fixed procurement contracts, and young families in small towns who just want better schooling for their children.
Mr Putin has neglected such concerns. If he thinks Mr Navalny is a charlatan, he should fight him on the election stump. Instead, he sends in his goons and in doing so says everything Russians need to know about the hollowness of his rule.