Article

Culture

Politics

23 February 2024

4 min read

Shall the tyrants win?

Understanding Navalny's death.

Michael Bird

Michael Bird is Deputy Principal at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia.

Flowers and notes of condolence for Alexander Navalny lie in a pile.

Commemorations of Alexei Navalny, Berlin.

Nikita Pishchugin on Unsplash.

Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was murdered in prison. Precisely how he died, we do not know. But many have wondered whether his death signals the end of organized opposition to Putin’s regime in Moscow.

Navalny was famous as an anti-corruption and pro-democracy activist. He survived a Novichok poisoning attempt in 2020, then, after recuperating in Germany, decided to return to Russia a short time later. Once back in Russia, he was soon arrested, sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle, and then – as we now know – murdered.

The torrid history of Russia as an empire and the violence of Putin’s regime against its own people make one wonder if any democratic and liberal resistance is futile.

On hearing of the death of Navalny, I watched the documentary about his life’s work, how despite harassment, murder attempts, and imprisonments, he tried to bring freedom and democracy to Russia. This was always going to be an uphill battle since Russia or parts thereof have been a dictatorship since the defeat of the Tatars in 1480. Moscow. Its Russian lands have been ruled by the Tsardom of Russia (1547), the Russian Empire (1721), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922), and the Russian Federation (1991). Despite a brief flirtation with democracy in the 1990s, Russia returned to its de facto state as a military dictatorship when Putin took power in a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, whether as prime minister or president, Putin has increasingly locked Russia under his iron grip and become increasingly hostile towards the west and western notions of liberalism.

Putin’s regime is known for its brutality, from the Salisbury poisonings against Sergei and Yulia Skripal back in 2018, to the gunning down of Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov in Spain a few days after Navalny’s death.

The torrid history of Russia as an empire and the violence of Putin’s regime against its own people make you wonder if any democratic and liberal resistance is futile.

As King Theoden in the Lord of the Rings says when his people faced annihilation by an army of Orcs, “So much death, what can men do against such reckless hate?”

God’s promise of the believer’s resurrection is not pious longing, but a political doctrine.

But Navalny had an answer, it was to tell the truth, even if that cost him, even to the point of being willing to lay down his life for others. These things came directly from Navalny's Christian faith.

Navalny, during his show trial in 2021, stated:

“The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists, and I was once quite a militant atheist myself,” Navalny said, “but now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities because everything becomes much, much easier.”

Navalny claimed that he was especially motivated by the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied”.

Death is the tyrant’s ultimate weapon to terrorize, to force people to suffer in silence, to make them accept enslavement and despotism as normal and unchangeable. But the promise of resurrection means that God intends to undo whatever the tyrant does. The worst of evil is no match for resurrection. The goodness of God’s power and the power of God’s goodness always defeats death. God’s promise of resurrection is not pious longing, but a political doctrine, the hope for creation to be renewed, powers to be reconciled, and all things to be put to rights.

Faith in God’s life-giving power is our defiance against evil powers, “against the leaders, against the authorities, against the powers that rule the world in this dark age, against the wicked spiritual elements in the heavenly places”, as St Paul writes. And defiance is contagious.

When evil men hunger for power, Christians are called to thirst for righteousness, as Navalny did.

Putin is not the only brutal dictator on the scene. There is the communist leader Xi Jinping (China), the socialist dictator Nicholas Maduro (Venezuela), the military council led by Min Aung Hlaing (Myanmar), the Shia theocrat Ali Khamenei (Iran), or the kleptocracy of Manasseh Sogavare (Solomon Islands). Then there is the danger of Christian Nationalism that also looms in the winds of Hungary and the USA. Yet the Christian faith teaches us that every Caesar, Tsar, King, General, and President who sets themselves up as an invincible and infallible icon of power will see their icon smashed eventually. Like the statue of Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem, irrespective of what depths of horror despots attain, not matter how much they self-aggrandize, their reign will one day be no more than a “shattered visage” at the feet of Jesus.

This is the truth that Jesus spoke to Pilate, what Paul said to Herod Agrippa II, and what courageous Christians like Navalny say today.

In the face of tyranny and terror, what is to be done? We can cherish Navalny’s memory, pray for his work to continue. But above all, we take solace in the fact that Jesus says, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world”.

That is not a dream or a distant hope, it’s a promise, a promise we make good with prayers, protests, energy, and efforts to build for the kingdom of Christ, to prepare the earth for the day when tyrants, terror, and tears are no more. By doing such things, we in effect erect a billboard saying, “The powers will be pacified, the lost will be found, the darkness will be cured by light, the world’s injustices will be undone, and God’s love will reign supreme.”

In other words, a time is coming, and now is already burgeoning like a breaking dawn, when Navalny’s thirst for righteousness will be more than satisfied.

Michael Bird is Deputy Principal at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. Together with N.T. Wright he is the author of Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracy published by SPCK and Zondervan.

Review

Art

Culture

26 July 2024

5 min read

Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d

Artist Richard Kenton Webb converses with the blind poet in his former home.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A black and white illustration shows a man holding a walk stick standing among tomb-like structures.

The blind poet. Charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Richard Kenton Webb.

‘Waiting to Speak to Milton’ shows the artist Richard Kenton Webb on a rain-swept night waiting in a valley for a car whose headlights can just be seen at the crest of the hill. For this image he has imagined himself waiting for a lift from John Milton to discuss the poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. As the opening image to Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles it is appropriately positioned in the porch by which visitors enter the cottage.

This image of light appearing in the dark night of the soul symbolises the beginning of Webb’s journey with Milton and his late poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. This has been a 10-year journey that Webb began following a conversation with his son in front of John Martin’s mezzotints for Paradise Lost at the Tate. Following on from his son’s encouragement to begin work, over that period, Webb says Milton has been a companion like Virgil to Dante guiding him through the narrative of his own life including the dark nights of redundancy and lockdown. The result has been 128 drawings, 40 paintings and 12 relief prints forming A Conversation with Milton’s Paradise Lost, a commission of 12 drawings in response to Milton’s pastoral elegy, Lycidas, for the Milton Society of America, and the 13 drawings forming this exhibition, A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes.

Milton proved an effective companion because he, too, had passed through his own dark night of the soul. He arrived in Chalfont St Giles to escape the Great Plague of 1665 after the Republican cause to which he had dedicated more than a decade of his life - being Oliver Cromwell’s unofficial spin doctor - had collapsed around him with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. He had been lucky to escape with his life following imprisonment and the banning of his books. In addition, he had lost his sight, his beloved second wife, much of his money and all of his influence.

Despite these traumas, Milton was able to express his love for his Creator wonderfully in Paradise Lost, which was completed at the cottage in Chalfont St Giles, and Paradise Regain’d, which was inspired whilst there. In both Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton deploys his rich verses and visions of spirituality and the forces of good and evil to reflect on the Restoration of the Monarchy and the loss of the English republic, doing so by means of Biblical stories concerning Jesus and Samson.

Browse Webb's exhibition

A black and white illustration show a person crouching in the corner and lifting as it was a stage drape.

Modes of Apprehension by Richard Kenton Webb – charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Inside a history cottage, black and white illustrations hang on the wall.

Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles.

A black and white illustration shows a two people close together on a pinnacle.

The Pinnacle by Richard Kenton Webb - charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles.

In Webb’s view, “Paradise Regain’d is about overcoming impossible situations” while, in Samson Agonistes, Milton’s Redeemer shows “Samson, the blind and foolish man”, “that we can always find hope in our living God even when society does not”. These poems moved Webb out of despair to discover hope because he knew they were heading towards redemption. As a result, he sees Milton as “a great English poet who gives hope, which in itself is a creative act for these difficult times”.

Although the story of Samson pre-dates that of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, Webb’s painting series begins with images inspired by Paradise Regain’d, just as Samson Agonistes followed Paradise Regain’d when both were jointly published in 1671, because Jesus’ resistance of temptation ultimately redeems those, like Samson and Adam and Eve, who were unable to resist.

These are images set against a dark background with the exception of the final Paradise Regain’d image with its white sky depicting a paradise within as Jesus has overcome temptation, is in full communion with God and is about to begin his ministry by calling his first disciples. The images move from the trauma and test of temptation – whether involving hunger, greed, lust, threat, pride or ambition – to a calmness of mind that is equipoise and liberation and which also enables the destruction of false temples.

They are images in which movement is arrested in still moments which form theatrical tableaux. These, like medieval and early Tudor morality plays, involve the viewer in an epic struggle between good and evil, involving temptation, fall and redemption. Webb’s use of charcoal and white chalk on paper emphasises the binary nature of this struggle. Being formed of charcoal and chalk, despite his use of contemporary equivalents for the temptations, the look and feel of Webb’s images also accords well with their exhibition setting, in rooms of low ceilings, uneven white walls, dark beams and furniture.

Webb’s works and exhibition also universalise Milton’s own experience of the dark night of the soul by merging that story with Webb’s own.

As Paradise Lost was the first illustrated poem in the English language, Milton’s poetry has, as Kelly O’Reilly, Director of Milton’s Cottage, has noted “inspired many of our greatest artists, from Blake to Turner, Dore to Dali”. Webb, who consciously works in the continuing tradition of Blake’s visionary art, is extending the tradition of illustrating Milton’s poems. It is appropriate, then, that, by exhibiting these drawings in Milton’s Cottage, they are placed alongside examples of illustrated editions of the poems, plus other paintings and prints relating to Milton.

Milton’s works are not only a repository of rich verse, which also gifted over 600 new words to the English language, but are also a conversation with scripture, its stories and their interpretation, plus the social and political ramifications of the Reformation in the British Isles. Webb’s works and exhibition also universalise Milton’s own experience of the dark night of the soul by merging that story with Webb’s own and linking those powerfully to the themes of Milton’s poems.

The key image, in this regard, is the first in the Paradise Regain’d series (‘Modes of Apprehension’), which sees Jesus in the wilderness turning up the corner of the wilderness backdrop, as in a theatre, to reveal another dimension or reality to existence and experience behind it. Hope is discovered in the midst of desolation, resilience found in the face of temptation. In these ways, Webb achieves his own hope for these works, that, “by responding to Milton’s universal themes of creation, destruction, temptation, love and loss”, he “can help new audiences find fresh ways to engage in Milton’s legacy”.

A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes, Milton’s Cottage, 3 July – 8 September 2024.

Visit the exhibition web site.