NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

Five years ago, he quit the liberal party Yabloko,
frustrated with the liberals’ infighting and isol
ation from mainstream Russian opinion. Liberals, m
eanwhile, have deep reservations about him, becaus
e he espouses Russian nationalist views. He has ap
peared as a speaker alongside neo-Nazis and skinhe
ads, and once starred in a video that compares dar
k-skinned Caucasus militants to cockroaches. While
cockroaches can be killed with a slipper, he says
that in the case of humans, “I recommend a pistol.”
What attracts people to Mr. Navalny is not ideolog
y, but the confident challenge he mounts to the sy
stem. A real estate lawyer by training, he employs
data — on his Web sites he documents theft at sta
te-run companies — and relentless, paint-stripping
contempt. “Party of Swindlers and Thieves” has ma
de its way into the vernacular with breathtaking s
peed and severely damaged United Russia’s politica
l brand.
He projects a serene confidence that events are co
nverging, slowly but surely, against the Kremlin.
“Revolution is unavoidable,” he told the Russian e
dition of Esquire, in an interview published this
month. “Simply because the majority of people unde
rstand that the system is wrong. When you are in t
he company of bureaucrats you hear them talking ab
out who has stolen everything, why nothing works a
nd how horrible everything is.”
He was less definitive about the future he envisio
ned for the country, saying only that he hoped it
would “resemble a huge, irrational, metaphysical C
anada.”
Mr. Navalny had become less obscure by the end of
the week. On Wednesday, the former mayor of Moscow
, Yuri M. Luzhkov, said he would consider appearin
g at a protest if Mr. Navalny invited him. A few h