This episode opens with the following statement on the murder of Alexey Navalny:
They finally killed Alexey Navalny. The relatively quick, agonizing death by poison failed. So, the slow, drawn-out horror of Russian prison did the job instead. No one was ever under the illusion that it wouldn’t come to this. And perhaps its inevitability is what makes it so hard to muster any outrage. That, and the fact that we are surrounded by so many horrors. We are living in dark times, indeed.
Make no mistake. Navalny was a victim of Putin’s Terror. Perhaps THE victim. OVD-Info, the Russian human rights group, reports that since February 2022, almost 20,000 people have been arrested for antiwar activity. Over 800 have been convicted. And though antiwar activism was never at the center of Navalny’s politics, he nonetheless stood for them all.
The Eurasian Knot has a handful of episodes related to Navalny. They stand as our record of who he was, his talents as a politician, his tenacity, his mistakes, and the complexities and controversies of his movement. Navalny’s politics were never our politics. But we admired him. It’s hard not to.
It’s difficult to imagine that Putin allowed him to run for mayor of Moscow a decade ago. And that he got 27 percent of the vote. It was a different Russia. And a different world.
Finally, we open with Navalny not just because of his murder. He’s also mentioned in the interview you’re about to hear about Russian prison knocking language. It would be strange not to note the irony that we are releasing an episode about the Russian revolutionary tradition on the day of Navalny’s death. It’s fitting and tragic that he now belongs among that crowded pantheon. Like them, Alexey Navalny dedicated his life to a better Russia. And only to get crushed for it.
How did generations of Russian revolutionaries communicate in prison? Especially under strict surveillance, censorship and enforced silence? One way was through the sound of tapping. Prisoners used purposeful “tuks, tuks, tuks” in a coded pattern to communicate through their cells’ thick granite walls. This syntax of taps developed in the 1820s and continued well into the 20th century. How did this tapping language develop and spread? How did it help concretize a collective revolutionary identity? The Eurasian Knot talked to Nicholas Bujalski to learn more about his prize winning article “Tuk, tuk, tuk!” A History of Russia’s Prison Knocking Language” published in the July 2022 issue of the Russian Review.
Guest:
Nicholas Bujalski is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Oberlin College. His writing has appeared in The Russian Review, Modern Intellectual History, and the Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, and his current book project is a cultural, intellectual, and spatial history of Russia’s revolutionary movement through the prison cells of the Peter and Paul Fortress. His article, “Tuk, tuk, tuk!” A History of Russia’s Prison Knocking Language” won best article in Russian Review in 2023.
Send us your sounds! https://euraknot.org/contact/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/euraknot
Knotty News: https://eurasianknot.substack.com/
The Knot’s Nest: https://eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/
Website: https://euraknot.org/
