It is often true that our past deeds come back to haunt us, though usually not literally. The ghosts of Marley and Banquo were the products of the imaginations of Charles Dickens and Wiliam Shakespeare, whereas Alexei Navalny is . . . sorry, was . . . very real indeed.

And what venue better lends itself to a real-world haunting than the Moscow Kremlin, with its assortment of eerie edifices and its long history of palace intrigues and murderous conspiracies? Not to mention a leader already reportedly suffering from the sort of paranoia common to despots whose lives have left them with much to atone for.

But why, after all of the years of Putin’s evil-doing, should I imagine it would finally catch up with him now? Call it the perfect storm. He’s psychologically dragged down by this war . . . oops! . . . “special military operation” in Ukraine that, instead of his original estimate of a couple of weeks, is now entering its third year, and that he doubtless wishes he’d never started. He is reportedly so frightened that people are plotting to kill him or, at the very least, instigate a coup against him, that he often refuses to tell even his closest confidants in advance of his planned whereabouts. The entire free world has turned against him because of his treatment of Ukraine. And now . . .

Now he’s really gone and done it. He arrested, imprisoned, isolated, tortured, starved, froze, and denied medical care to the most loved, admired and respected member of the political opposition: Alexei Navalny. And, still fearing Navalny’s influence, even from a Siberian prison camp, on his millions of freedom-loving Russian followers, Putin ultimately had him murdered, either by direct order or as the result of years of barbaric mistreatment.

And Putin, never satisfied, has compounded that atrocity with yet another: His people at the penal colony and the nearby morgue, after refusing for a full eight days to allow Navalny’s family to see the body of their loved one, have only now permitted his mother to view him and to receive his body for burial, but only on the condition that the family agrees to a private, “secret” funeral in some isolated spot, away from the public eye. Otherwise, they threaten that he will be allowed to “decompose,” and will be buried without ceremony there, in the frozen Siberian wasteland.

So the first question that comes to mind is obviously: What the hell are they hiding? Is it some residual evidence of the true cause of his death? Are they afraid of the crowds of people who would be sure to gather to pay their respects to a man they admired and believed in? Or, most likely, is it both?

In the meantime, Alexei Navalny’s elderly mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is left to deal with the prison authorities on her own; her son’s wife and children are living in exile, hopefully out of reach of Putin’s hit squads. Navalny’s team continues to fight by long distance, as condemnation from the free world rains down on Putin’s head. Hopefully the pressure will be sufficient to win the sort of dignified closure to Navalny’s life that every decent human being deserves.

*. *. *

And now — after all of the persecution, the indignities and the torture heaped upon him over the past decades, culminating in his sudden and unexplained death — I doubt that many would be surprised if Alexei Navalny’s ghost were suddenly to appear in Vladimir Putin’s bedchamber, pointing the bony finger of death at his killer and paraphrasing the words of old Jacob Marley himself:

“[We] wear the chains [we] forged in life . . .” *

Mark those words, Mr. Putin; they may well portend your future.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/25/24

* Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.