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This Friday Russians will “cast their votes in what is still referred to as a ‘presidential election,’” writes Christian Caryl in the Review’s April 4 issue, “although it bears little resemblance to what is usually understood by the term.” Vladimir Putin’s vybory bez vyborov—election without choices—comes one month after Alexey Navalny, the charismatic opposition leader who had become the public face of protests against Vladimir Putin’s regime, died under suspicious circumstances in an Arctic prison. In the face of multiple assassination attempts and repeated arrests, Navalny had “demonstrated remarkable physical courage, political acumen, and organizational skills,” Caryl writes. “Navalny deployed [his] voice to punch a gigantic hole through the official myth that Russians are unified in worshipful obeisance to their supreme leader. In the process he effectively succeeded in breaking the regime’s monopoly on public life.”

Below, alongside Caryl’s article, we have compiled a selection of essays about Navalny, Putin, and the state of the opposition in Russia.

Christian Caryl
Mourning Navalny

Alexey Navalny’s death represents the culmination of the Kremlin’s efforts to push the country into a political deep freeze, but his legacy is a new generation of Russians who yearn to imagine alternatives to Putin’s regime.

Anastasia Edel
Putin’s Constitutional Tsarism

“In Russia, the constitution has rarely been a covenant of good governance between the state and the people. Rather, it is a tool to enshrine imposed order and provide a legal pretext for cracking down on dissent.”

Amy Knight
Navalny, Anti-Rutabaga Candidate

“This is the third time this year that the authorities have put Navalny behind bars. Rather than intimidate him, the arrests seem to embolden him. After his twenty-day sentence was announced, Navalny tweeted in his characteristic taunting fashion: ‘Old man Putin is so scared of our rallies in the regions he’s decided to make himself happy by giving himself a little gift for his birthday. It’s safer this way.’”

Benjamin Nathans
Russia: The Joyful New Activism

“Though unsure how to protest and uncertain whether doing so would reduce ‘all these lies, this filth, this vileness,’ she and several others agreed that the demonstrations had accomplished something important. ‘We have seen that we are not alone.’”

Masha Gessen
The New Face of Russian Resistance

“This is how post-totalitarian terror works—by punishing a randomly chosen few to frighten the many. What is giving some Russians hope is that a new generation of people who are not yet frightened seems to have burst onto the scene.”

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Masha Gessen
‘Total Catastrophe of the Body’: A Russian Story

“The Russian journalist and pro-democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been a vocal proponent of individual sanctions—and therefore has a record number of enemies among the people who run Russia—was poisoned for the second time in early February 2017.”

Jamey Gambrell
Putin Strikes Again

“Murdering journalists is simply the most visible manifestation of the constant campaign against the press. Far more effective are the economic, judicial, and administrative measures being used systematically to quash human rights and information-gathering organizations and other genuinely independent members of civil society. Frequent tax audits and expensive, time-consuming re-registration procedures have been among the weapons of choice.”

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