Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary), is calumny. Calumny, pronounced / ˈkæl əm ni /,is a noun that means “a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something” or “the act of uttering calumnies” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/calumny).

Etymonline.com says that it appears in English in the “mid-15c., ‘false accusation, slander,’ from Old French calomnie (15c.), from Latin calumnia ‘trickery, subterfuge, misrepresentation, malicious charge,’ from calvi ‘to trick, deceive.’

“According to de Vaan, PIE cognates include Greek kēlein ‘to bewitch, cast a spell,’ Gothic holon ‘to slander,’ Old Norse hol ‘praise, flattery,’ Old English hol ‘slander,’ holian ‘to betray,’ Old High German huolen ‘to deceive.’ The whole group is perhaps from the same root as call (v.). A doublet of challenge” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=calumny).

Doublets in linguistics “are two distinct words derived from the same source but by different routes of transmission, such as poison and potion (both from the Latin potio, a drink). Also known as lexical doublets and etymological twins. When the two words are used together in a phrase they are called coupled synonyms or binomial expressions.

“Three words of this kind are called triplets: e.g., place, plaza, and piazza (all from the Latin platea, a broad street)” (https://www.thoughtco.com/what-are-doublets-words-1690477).

Merriam-Webster says, “Calumny made an appearance in these famous words from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.’ The word had been in the English language for a while, though, before Hamlet uttered it. It first entered English in the 15th century and comes from the Middle French word calomnie of the same meaning. Calomnie, in turn, derives from the Latin word calumnia, (meaning ‘false accusation,’ ‘false claim,’ or ‘trickery’), which itself traces to the Latin verb calvi, meaning ‘to deceive’” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calumny).

On this date in 2017, Russian activist Alexei Navalny was “sentenced to 30 days administrative arrest for organizing rallies.”

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (1976-2024) was half Russia, half Ukrainian. He grew up in the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991. He earned a law degree from the “Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in 1998” and studied finance at “the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, graduating in 2001” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny). “In 2010, upon recommendation from Garry Kasparov, Yevgeniya Albats and Sergey Guriev, Navalny received a scholarship to the Yale World Fellows program at Yale University, where he studied political science and world affairs. As a World Fellow at Yale University’s World Fellows Program, Navalny aimed at ‘creating a global network of emerging leaders and to broaden international understanding’” (ibid.).

Navalny became very active in politics in Russia starting around 2000 and continuing forward. He was part of the Russian United Democratic Party, and he participated on a variety of councils. He was a starch opponent of Vladimir Putin and accused Putin. At the same time, he was working as a corporate lawyer.

In 2012, he was accused by the government of embezzling. The case went to trial, and Navalny was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. However, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial, and Russia was ordered to pay Navalny 56,000 euros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny#Kirovles_case).

In late December 2012, the Investigative Committee of Russia asserted that Allekt, an advertising company headed by Navalny, defrauded the Union of Right Forces (SPS) political party in 2007 by taking 100 million rubles ($3.2 million) payment for advertising and failing to honor its contract. If charged and convicted, Navalny could be jailed for up to 10 years. Leonid Gozman, a former SPS official, was quoted as saying: ‘Nothing of the sort happened—he committed no robbery’” (ibid.).

“Navalny alleged that Russian billionaire and businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin was linked to a company called Moskovsky Shkolnik (Moscow schoolboy) that had supplied poor quality food to schools which had caused a dysentery outbreak. In April 2019, Moskovsky Shkolnik filed a lawsuit against Navalny. In October 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Navalny to pay 29.2 million rubles. Navalny said that ‘Cases of dysentery were proven using documents. But it’s us that has to pay’” (ibid.).

On the 20^th of August of 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a medicinal chemical that can also be used as a poison. Navalny was flying at the time, and he was taken from the plane to a hospital. But then he was transferred to a hospital in Germany that was better able to treat the symptoms of the poisoning. “On 2 September, the German government announced that Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, from the same family of nerve agents that was used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter. International officials said that they had obtained ‘unequivocal proof’ from toxicology tests, and have called on the Russian government for an explanation. On 7 September, German doctors announced that he was out of the coma. On 15 September, Navalny’s spokeswoman said that Navalny would return to Russia” (ibid.).

When Navalny returned to Russia, he was detained for violating the terms of parole that he had been granted following one of his convictions. He had violated the terms of his parole by leaving Russia and going to Germany to get emergency medical treatment for the poisoning that the Russian government tried to kill him with.

In addition to the charges mentioned above, there were numerous other charges brought against Navalny. After his return from Germany, he was sentenced to 2½ years in a Siberian prison. He died there on February 16^th, 2024.

I’ve never been to Russia. I wasn’t there for any of the trials against Alexei Navalny. But it seems pretty clear that the cases brought against him were the result of calumny, that he was a political prisoner and a martyr in the cause of freedom and democracy in Russia.

The image today is of the grave of Alexei Navalny (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_of_Alexey_Navalny.jpg).