Alexei Navalny | |
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Alexei Navalny in 2013
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Born |
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny June 4, 1976 Butyn, Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
Residence | Moscow |
Nationality | Russian |
Alma mater |
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia Finance University under the Government of the Russian Federation Yale University |
Occupation | Lawyer, activist, politician |
Organization | Anti-Corruption Foundation |
Known for | Political and social activism, blogging |
Political party |
Progress Party (2013–present) Yabloko (2000–2007) |
Movement | Various liberal, civic nationalist, and national democrat organizations |
Opponent(s) | Vladimir Putin and United Russia party |
Board member of | Aeroflot (2012–2013) |
Spouse(s) | Yulia Navalnaya |
Children | 2 |
Awards | Yale World Fellow (2010) |
Website | navalny |
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (Russian: Алексе́й Анато́льевич Нава́льный, Russian pronunciation: [əlʲɪkˈsʲej ənɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪt͡ɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]; born June 4, 1976) is a Russian lawyer, political and financial activist, and politician. Since 2009, he has gained prominence in Russia, and in the Russian and international media, as a critic of corruption and of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has organized large-scale demonstrations promoting democracy and attacking political corruption, Putin, and Putin's political allies; he has run for a political office on the same platform. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal described him as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most".
A self-described nationalist democrat, Navalny is a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member and the leader of the political party Progress Party, formerly People's Alliance. In September 2013, he ran in the Moscow mayoral election, supported by the RPR-PARNAS party. He came in second, with 27% of the vote, losing to incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin appointee. His vote total was much higher than political analysts had expected, but Navalny and his allies insisted that the actual number was still higher, and that authorities had committed election fraud in order to prevent a runoff election from taking place.
Navalny came to prominence via his blog, hosted on the website LiveJournal, which remains his primary method of communicating with the public. He has used his blog to attack Putin and his allies, to organize political demonstrations, to post documents showing Putin and his allies to be engaged in unsavory behavior and, most recently, to promote his campaigns for office. He has also been active in other media: most notably, in a 2011 radio interview he described Russia's ruling party, United Russia, as a "party of crooks and thieves", which soon became a popular epithet. He created the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011.