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74 Opinion
Nobel prize fight
bne November 2021
The Nobel committee has awarded Russian founder and editor of Novaya Gazeta the Peace Prize for his work to create a free press, but the decision has also highlighted the fractures in Russia's opposition movement.
by Navalny for complicity in election fraud during the Duma elections last month.
Venediktov had become the public face of the Kremlin’s highly controversial e-voting project, which is seen by Navalny’s supporters as the main tool of falsification, especially in Moscow, where it overturned the results at the last minute
in favour of Kremlin candidates.
In a rude op-ed, Muratov blasted Navalny’s camp for criticising Venediktov and accused them of nothing less than promoting Stalinism, because many of the candidates backed by Navalny’s strategic voting initiative, known as Smart Voting, represented the Communist Party. Smart Voting boils down
to supporting candidates who are most likely to derail those backed by the Kremlin, in a situation when any real opposition is barred from elections.
Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, responded to it
by saying that he “puked’ upon reading the article. Muratov replied in kind: “As an advocate of human freedoms,
I endorse your unalienable right to puke.” As a result,
the very first reaction to Muratov’s award that came from Navalny’s camp was Volkov tweeting this very quote with no further comments.
While more diplomatic, other statements made by Navalny’s close allies betrayed disappointment. Lyubov Sobol congratulated Muratov while posting Navalny’s photo saying she believed the latter was “the main fighter for peace in our country and beyond”. Ruslan Shaveddinov said instead of “pompous speeches about freedom”, the Nobel Committee could have defended “a man who survived assassination and who is now being held hostage by the assassins”.
Upon receiving the award, Muratov made a graceful gesture by saying that he would have voted for Navalny, had he been on the Nobel Prize Committee.
Navalny returned the compliment following the weekend in
Leonid Razgozin in Latvia
In 1993, Mikhail Gorbachev spent a small portion of the money from his Nobel Prize for Peace, awarded three years prior, on eight computers requested by a modest journalistic startup. The latter grew to become Novaya Gazeta – a flagship of Russian independent journalism, whose long-time editor Dmitry Muratov has just become the third Russian, after Gorbachev and Andrey Sakharov, to receive the world’s most prestigious award. He will share it with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement that the pair represented all journalists who are fighting for freedom of expression “in a world in which democracy and freedom of press face increasingly adverse conditions”.
The prize feels well deserved, given Novaya Gazeta’s dogged dedication to the subject of human rights, especially during the first decade of Putin’s rule, when most Russian reporters moved into the relative comfort of business journalism and infotainment.
But with it, Muratov also seems to have inherited the controversy which surrounded Gorbachev – lionised in the West, but getting a cold reception at home, including from liberals. For many Russians, the decision betrayed the West’s tone-deafness and intellectual laziness that has long been dogging Russia discourse.
In Muratov’s case, the news about him getting the prize triggered outrage in the camp of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny. Having survived a near-lethal poisoning and jailed after his audacious return to Russia, Navalny had been seen as one of Nobel Prize frontrunners this year.
On the surface, this reaction stems from a rather mundane spat pertaining to personal loyalties. But in reality it reflects more fundamental issues of ethics and compromise with an authoritarian regime as well as the conflict of generations in the Russian opposition.
In the days preceding the Nobel Committee's announcement, Muratov threw his weight behind his friend – the editor of Echo Moskvy radio, Aleksey Venediktov – who was blamed
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