She has just graduated but she already has quite a bit of political experience. Dasha Navalnaya is our European of the week. The eldest daughter of Alexeï Navalny, the Russian opponent who died in detention last February, is committed to continuing the fight led by her father to the point of lending a hand to Kamala Harris’ campaign.
In 2023, aged just 23, Dasha Navalnaya gives a Ted talk in Georgia and follows in her father’s footsteps. Alexei Navalany was still alive in his prison at the time: “ If being my father’s daughter has taught me anything, it’s to never give in to fear and sadness. Russia is my home and I promise you: I will continue to speak out, tell the truth and fight until Russia becomes a free and democratic country. Free Alexei Navalny “.
She is also the one who receives the Sakharov Prize in the European Parliament in 2021 on behalf of her father. Very young but already very political. So much so that today she is one of the rare voices of the Russian opposition in exile.
From student in California to support of Kamala Harris
Her real first name is Daria but everyone knows her by her nickname Dasha. She has just finished her studies at the prestigious American University of Stanford in California after an obviously special childhood. The first time police entered her family’s apartment, she was 10 years old. “ It is the political commitment of his father at the risk of his life which is the most striking fact of this childhood », notes Cyrille Bret, researcher at the Montaigne Institute, specialist in Russia. “ This determines his position in Russian politics of course, but also in American politics. “. With her psychology and political science degree in hand, Dasha Navalnaya made a surprising choice: she has just signed up for Kamala Harris. To take care of his campaign in Pennsylvania as we learn from the British newspaper The Times.
Field activist
Dasha Navalnaya is a “field organizer”, a field coordinator responsible for organizing the mobilization of voters and the animation of local sections of the Democratic Party. Since August, she has been involved in Pennsylvania, a key state for the November election. A first job announced discreetly on his Linkedin account. If she did not officially support Kamala Harrisit is still a surprising choice, even for researcher Cyrille Bret: “ it is obviously a political commitment in the continuity of the values defended by his father. But at the same time, it is a way of anchoring itself in the American political landscape, which risks discrediting it quite permanently on the Russian political scene. “.
What role in Russia?
Abroad, he is already one of the main anti-Putin figures, alongside his mother. Dasha Navalnaya has given several notable interviews to the German magazine Spiegel and the American television CNN. She also conducted a series of very political interviews with young people on her YouTube channel. But it is above all on her Instagram account and with her 264 thousand followers that Dasha shares her daily life as a young person of her time, despite the threats weighing on her. So can she really play a political role in Russia while living in the United States? “ If she wanted to play an active political role in Russia, it was rather the path of her father’s martyrdom that she should have followed », Notes researcher Cyrille Bret. “ For a figure of this type, from exile, a Stanford graduate, to have a political role in Russia, there would simply have to be a change of regime in Moscow “. We ask ourselves the same question about his mother Ioulia. And it is difficult to measure among Russians the impact of the words of Navalny’s widow, who lives hidden somewhere in Europe. For Cyrille Bret, young Russians, even if they heard Dasha Navalnaya, would probably not follow her: “ The young population of Russia’s large urban centers is obviously more inclined to join the protest against the regime. But this is entirely a Putin generation. It was Vladimir Putin who shaped the country’s political culture. And this political culture is today designed to make inaudible any words that come from abroad “. Dasha Navalnaya assures her, she will return to live one day in Moscow, her favorite city.