Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoirs testify to his resilience

NEW YORK — In his memoir published eight months after his death in prison, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny never loses the conviction that his cause deserves to suffer, while admitting that he wishes he could have written a very different book .

“There is a mixture of bits and pieces, a traditional story followed by a prison diary,” Navalny writes in “Patriot,” published Tuesday, and which is indeed a traditional story followed by a prison diary.

“I really don’t want my book to be yet another prison diary. Personally I find them interesting to read, but as a genre it’s probably enough.

The last 200 pages of Navalny’s 479-page book in some ways have characteristics of other prison diaries or classic Russian literature like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” He tracks the boredom, isolation, exhaustion, suffering and absurdity of prison life, while working in asides on everything from 19th-century French literature to Billie Eilish. But “Patriot” also reads as a testimony to a famous dissident’s extraordinary fight against despair as Russian authorities gradually intensify their repression against him, and even offers advice on how to face the worst without losing hope.

“The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge, but to instantly move to acceptance. It can be difficult,” he writes. “The process that goes on in your head is by no means simple, but if you find yourself in a bad situation, you should try this. It works, as long as you think about it seriously.

In recent years, Navalny had become an international symbol of resistance. A lawyer by training, he started out as an anti-corruption campaigner but quickly became a politician aspiring to public office and eventually became the leading challenger to longtime Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, oversaw the book’s completion. In a promotional interview for “Patriot,” she told the BBC that she would run for president if she ever returned to Russia — an unlikely move with Putin in power, Navalnaya acknowledged. She was arrested in absentia in Russia for involvement in an extremist group. Putin “needs to be in a Russian prison, to feel everything that not only my husband feels, but all the prisoners in Russia feel,” Navalnaya said in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Navalnaya vowed to continue her late husband’s fight. She has regularly recorded video speeches to her supporters and met with Western leaders and senior officials, defending Russians who oppose Putin and his war in Ukraine. She had two children with her husband, who in his book talks about his immediate attraction to her and their lasting bond, praising Navalnaya as a kindred spirit who “could discuss the most difficult topics with me without a lot of drama and unpleasantness “.

In the first part of his book, Navalny looks back on the fall of the Soviet Union, his disenchantment with 1990s Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, his first crusades against corruption, his entry into public life and his discovery that he didn’t need to look far. for a politician “who would undertake all kinds of interesting and necessary projects and cooperate directly with the Russian people.”

“I wanted and I waited, and one day I realized I could be that person myself,” he wrote.

His vision of a “beautiful Russia of the future”, where leaders are freely and fairly elected, where official corruption is controlled and where democratic institutions function – as well as his strong charisma and sardonic humor – have earned him a wide support in the country’s 11 countries. time zones. He had young, energetic activists at his side – a team that resembled “a sophisticated start-up” rather than a clandestine revolutionary operation, according to his memoir. “From the outside we looked like a bunch of Moscow hipsters,” he writes, and together they made colorful, professional videos exposing official corruption. These videos were viewed millions of times on YouTube and sparked mass rallies, even as authorities cracked down harder on dissent.

Authorities have responded to Navalny’s growing popularity by bringing multiple charges against him, his allies and even members of his family. They often imprisoned him and shut down his entire political infrastructure – the Anti-Corruption Foundation he created in 2011 and a network of several dozen regional offices.

In 2020, Navalny survived a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin, which has denied any involvement. He describes it in detail at the very beginning of the book, saying: “It’s too much and I’m about to die.” » His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment. After five months of convalescence, he returned to Russia, only to be arrested and sent to prison, where he would spend the last three years of his life.

In his memoirs, Navalny recalls telling his wife, while he was still hospitalized in Berlin, that he would “of course” return to Russia.

The pressure on him continued behind bars, intensifying after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and intensified its crackdown on dissent to unprecedented levels. In messages released from prison, Navalny described the harsh conditions of solitary confinement, where he was placed for months for various minor offenses of which prison authorities relentlessly accused him, lack of sleep , poor diet and lack of medical assistance. In October 2023, three of his lawyers were arrested and two others placed on a wanted list.

In December 2023, authorities transferred Navalny to a penal colony offering the highest level of security in the Russian prison system, in a remote town above the Arctic Circle. In February 2024, Navalny, 47, died there suddenly; the circumstances and cause of his death still remain a mystery. Yulia Navalnya and her allies say the Kremlin killed him, while authorities say Navalny died of “natural causes” but would not reveal any details of what happened.

Tens of thousands of Russians attended his funeral on the outskirts of Moscow in March, a rare show of defiance in a country where any street rally or even a simple picket often results in immediate arrests and prison sentences. prison.

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Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia.

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