Dollbaum , Jan Matti Lallouet , Morvan Noble , Ben Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future? (review)

Abstract

SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 794 allow for more secure property rights and for a reduction in the economic stakes associated with the transition of power. This difference in thinking also affects any assessment of the fragility of the overall system. Åslund argues that Russia’s crony capitalism is doomed: ‘it is too petrified and brittle to stand the challenges of our time’ (p. 251), but viewing it from a more systemic point of view, as an example of a limited access order (in the framework of North, Wallis and Weingast’s Violence and Social Orders, Cambridge, 2009), leads to a more tempered assessment about its longevity. King’s College London Gulnaz Sharafutdinova Dollbaum, Jan Matti; Lallouet, Morvan and Noble, Ben. Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? Hurst & Company, London, 2021. xii + 252 pp. Notes. Index. £20.00. Alexei Navalny’s oppositional but seemingly vain struggle against the authoritarian Putin regime has dominated recent years’ news coverage of Russia. As the dramatic events connected to Navalny’s poisoning, trial and imprisonment in 2020–21 unfolded together with his release of the YouTube video, ‘A Palace for Putin’, and massive demonstrations all over the country to his support, the international public started to ask for reliable information about Navalny. Who is this man? Is he a pragmatic politician, a fearless and staunch advocate of civil disobedience, or a PR-hungry and relentless fighter against windmills? Or, is he all or none of the above? In order to try to answer these questions the authors of this important monograph, Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet and Ben Noble, fruitfully analyse the basic roles (or dimensions of his activity, as they prefer to call them) that together make up the public persona of the contradictory and partly enigmatic character of Navalny. In separate chapters they thus take on Navalny as an anti-corruption activist, as a politician and as a protester. Based on the developments from early 2021 on, they also add rudimentary sketches of a fourth role, namely Navalny as a prisoner. They present their arguments in an easily accessible journalistic style, devoid of academic jargon. Even so, the book is very well researched and solidly referenced. Academic readers will be reassured to find that the authors have used triangulated and diversified sources, on a spectrum from online critical and journalistic sources in Russian and English to a rich array of the scholarly literature relevant for the field. Their easy style of presentation is commendable in many ways, as it will undoubtedly help the authors reach a wider audience, not just an academic one, but readers of the latter category may still regret the fact that the authors did not choose to present a traditional list of references. REVIEWS 795 The authors succeed well in analysing the contradictions that are so characteristic of Navalny. One of them is the way in which he advocates the standards of liberal democracy in Russia while being rather authoritarian in his own leadership style. The authors stress that Navalny has been very keen to listen in on popular public sentiments. For example, he has combined a liberal approach to economics with views on social welfare reminiscent of Scandinavian social democracy. In his tuning in on popular sentiments, he oftenemergesasanopportunist,whichperhapsexplainshisearly,controversial flirt with nationalism and anti-migrant sentiments, which, albeit later partly reneged on by him, has come to darken his reputation among liberals at home and abroad. Likewise, he has criticized the way that the annexation of Crimea took place in stark violation of international law, but has stated that now that it has become a fact, it should stay in the Russian Federation. This ambiguous stance should certainly be seen in the context of the domestic popularity of the annexation. In general, this book is a study of Navalny’s public roles, not a biography. It is therefore not an attempt to understand what has formed him into the individual that he is, and what may have brought him to taking on these roles. In the plot of the book, Navalny essentially emerges out of a tabula rasa in the early 2000s, as the authors dispense with his background, youth and upbringing in two...