Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.
In a breaking story that will have serious international implications, we’re just learning from the Russians that dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in Vladimir Putin’s gulag. Specifically, the 47-year-old Navalny perished in a brutal Arctic concentration camp called “Polar Wolf.” (Circa 1920, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky first used the words “concentration camp” to describe their new gulag system, well before Adolf Hitler used the term in Germany a decade later.)
The death in the Polar Wolf penal colony conjures up so many victims’ names and images from the Russian past and present. Speaking of Lenin and Trotsky and their Bolsheviks, one thinks of their bayoneting of another Alexei — the young hemophiliac heir to the Romanov throne. The Bolsheviks murdered him and his sisters and entire family in their House of Special Designation in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.
Thereafter, Lenin and his successor, Joseph Stalin, implemented the vast gulag system throughout Siberia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the greatest of Soviet dissidents, who somehow managed to survive Siberia, called it The Gulag Archipelago in his classic book. Countless millions of innocents perished there. The late Hoover Institution historian, Arnold Beichman, once estimated that upwards of 20 million Soviet citizens perished in the gulag under Stalin alone in the 1930s.
More recently, under Vladimir Putin, a man who learned his tactics in the KGB in the 1980s, one thinks of the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko, one of the earliest Putin purges of a dissident, and one of the earliest telltale signs that the new Russian president was a thug. In the case of Litvinenko, it was polonium-210 poisoning.
The Litvinenko death evoked memories of the infamous “umbrella assassin” in Bulgaria in the 1980s.
Communist thuggery has long been about precisely this: death. Death, death, death. I wrote here earlier this week about Lech Wałęsa’s statement to me last Friday in Washington, where he noted that there had been five documented cases of attempted assassination against him. I wrote about the plot that was organized against Wałęsa in January 1981. The communists failed to put a finger on Wałęsa that time, but four months later, in May 1981, they put two bullets in Pope John Paul II smack in the middle of St. Peter’s Square.
All of which brings us back to the breaking news of Alexei Navalny’s death. For those who think this is an internal affair of concern only to Russians, take careful note of the statement from Joe Biden in June 2021 after meeting with Putin in Geneva. Asked what would happen if Navalny died in Russian custody, our president told the press: “I made it clear to [Putin] that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.”
Devastating, President Biden? How so? What would you do? Actually, what will you now do?
Bear in mind, that Biden statement came well before Mad Dog Putin sent hordes of Russian boys into Ukraine in February 2022. The two-year anniversary of that war is coming up next week (Feb. 24). Back in December, the Wall Street Journal, citing a U.S. intelligence estimate, reported that Putin’s assault on the Ukraine “has devastated Russia’s preinvasion military machine,” with nearly 90 percent of its prewar army lost to injury or death. The figures are breathtaking: the report claims that 315,000 Russian personnel have been injured or killed since February 2022. Then again, I’m not shocked. I noted here as early as March 2022, the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Russians always get their butts kicked in battle.
That reality is already devastating for Russia. What will be the response to this single death of Alexei Navalny? Well, it isn’t something to start World War III over, or for America to escalate an already ugly situation with the Russkies. That’s for sure. But it’s also something requiring serious condemnation. Yes, but how so? In what form? What would you do as president of the United States? That’s not an easy decision.
We shall see. But we know this much: this news isn’t good.
As always…and excellent article about this subject. Wish I still lived in Pittsburgh! Sad, I am no longer close to you to attend your events.
Thrilled I get the Faith & Freedom information.
I grew up in the ’50’s and 60’s. We were very aware of Russia and its threat to the world. I fear that is no longer the case. Thanks for a great article.
RIP to a man of immense courage who stood up to a tyrant in the name of freedom.
I really hope the presumptive GOP nominee’s recent comment that he would let Russia do whatever it wanted had nothing to do with this.
What will we do about all the political prisoners being held in Washington DC? From what I read, and heard directly from former Congressman Louis Gohmert, that they dwell in horrid conditions. What is their crime? Why can’t they have bail hearings? The claim of insurrection on Jan 6 has never been proven. Let’s model justice here first before we react to every injustice around the world.
We’re getting closer in the US to imprisonment of political opponents
Dr. Kengor, As always well researched and well written and you pose the right questions for our president. But, unfortunately, like the Biden conspiracy evidence that we continually read and hear about, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. These people, Jordan and Comer, have this pile of incriminating evidence that goes nowhere.
Like Obama’s famous red line that was crossed and Biden’s “consequences would be devastating for Russia” NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. WHY?
Thank you Paul, keep us posted! We will await the response from Biden, although I suspect he will deny the threatening verbiage he made earlier. Was their an “official” cause of death?
Dr. Paul,
Thanks for the prompt article.
When some opponent is martyred sometimes the opposition is defeated. However, sometimes the underground becomes emboldened and grows stronger.
I expect this Russian war is more unpopular than our Viet Nam and their Afghanistan. I expect Putin assassination plans have been underway and are growing closer to becoming a reality. This will be devastating for Putin.
See you at the Iroquois Economic Seminar in April 17 at Conneaut Lake, PA