For years I have been content to be conflicted about Alexey Navalny. On the one hand, I thought he was an extraordinarily brave, inventive, and committed opponent of Vladimir Putin’s regime. On the other hand, he had allied himself with ultranationalists and had expressed views that I found extremely objectionable and potentially dangerous. Over the years, I’ve had a couple of arguments with Navalny and a few with my friends whose support for him flummoxed me—a mentor of his who is Jewish, a tireless campaign volunteer who is Armenian—but I felt I could respect him and disagree with him at the same time. Nationalist leaders have, historically, often played key roles in building democracies. And it’s not as if I had to decide whether to vote for Navalny.
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