ABSTRACT
In a few short years, civic activist, jurist, and blogger Aleksei Navalny (1976) has emerged as the major political opponent to President Putin. Almost unknown in 2011, he became the main figure embodying the 2011–2012 protests, with a slogan that denounced United Russia as a “party of crooks and thieves.” Russia’s most popular blogger in 2013, he reached one million followers on his Twitter account in 2015, and 57 percent of the population was aware of him on the eve of the 2018 presidential elections. 2 Navalny has never been formally registered to participate in an election, with the exception (after multiple twists and turns and several legal proceedings) of the September 2013 Moscow mayoral race, when he secured 27 percent of the vote to come in second behind incumbent mayor Sergei Sobianin – a success in the Russian political context. Since then, Navalny has focused on denouncing the corrupt schemes of current elites, and has faced regular arrests, stints in jail or house arrest, and extensive red tape.
