In his memoirs, published eight months after his death, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny never loses faith that his cause is worth some suffering and also admits that he would like to write a much different book, BTA reported.
“It has a mixture of disparate styles, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary“, Navalny writes in his memoirs, titled “Patriot“, which came out yesterday and are in fact a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary.
“I don't want my book to be just another prison diary. Personally, I find them interesting to read, but as a genre – they are certainly enough“.
The last 200 of Navalny's 479 pages of his book somehow have the characteristics of other prison diaries or of such classic Russian works as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich“. It traces the boredom, isolation, exhaustion, suffering and absurdity of prison life, while at the same time engaging with everything from 19th-century French literature to (singer) Billie Eilish. But “Patriot“ also stands as a testament to the famous dissident's extraordinary battle against despair as the Russian authorities gradually escalated their repression against him. In his memoirs, Navalny even gives advice on how people can face the worst and not lose hope.
“The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge, but to constantly move closer to accepting things. This can be difficult“, he writes. “The process that takes place in your head will by no means be straightforward, but you will find yourself in a bad situation if you do not try this. It will work as long as you take it seriously“, he adds.
In recent years, Navalny has become an international symbol of resistance. A lawyer by training, he was initially an anti-corruption activist but soon became a politician with aspirations to public office and the potential to become the main rival of long-time President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny's widow - Yulia Navalna, supervised the completion of the book. In an interview for the launch of “Patriot,” she told the BBC that she would run for president if she ever returned to Russia — an unlikely step while Putin is in power, Navalna acknowledged. An arrest warrant has been issued in absentia for her in Russia on charges of involvement in an extremist group. Putin “should lie in a Russian prison, feel everything that not only my husband but all prisoners in Russia feel,” Navalna said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
She has vowed to continue her late husband’s fight. Navalna regularly records video messages to supporters and meets with Western leaders and dignitaries, advocating for Russians who oppose Putin and his war in Ukraine. She has two children with her husband, who writes in his book about the immediate love he felt for her and their enduring relationship. In his memoirs, Navalny describes Yulia as a kindred spirit who “could discuss the most difficult issues with me without any drama or arm-twisting.”
In the first part of the book, Navalny reflects on the collapse of the Soviet Union, his disillusionment with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, his early opposition to corruption, his entry into public life, and his discovery that he did not have to look very long for a politician “who would take on all the necessary, interesting projects and cooperate directly with the Russian people.”
“I wanted such a politician to appear, I waited for him, and one day I realized that I could be that person,” he writes.
His vision of a “beautiful Russia of the future,” in which leaders are freely and fairly elected, corruption in state power is under control, and democratic institutions are working - winning him widespread support across the country. He has young, energetic activists on his side - a team more suited to a "fantasy startup" than a secret revolutionary operation, Navalny writes in his memoirs. "From the outside, we looked like a "group of Moscow hipsters," he adds. Together, Navalny and his team create colorful, professionally produced videos exposing corruption in state power. The videos garner millions of views on YouTube and spark mass protests as the authorities crack down on dissent.
In response to Navalny’s growing popularity, the authorities have brought numerous charges against him, his allies, and even his family members. They have frequently detained him and shut down his entire political infrastructure – the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which he founded in 2011, as a network of several dozen regional offices.
In 2020, Navalny survived a nerve agent poisoning, which he blames on the Kremlin, which denies any involvement. At the very beginning of his book, he describes this stage in great detail, saying: “This is too much and I am about to die.” His family and supporters managed to get him flown to Germany for treatment, and after five months of recovery, he returned to Russia, only to be arrested and sent to prison, where he spent the last three years of his life.
In his memoirs, Navalny recalled telling his wife while he was still in the Berlin hospital that “of course” he would return to Russia.
The pressure on him continued behind bars, escalating after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when the crackdown on dissent escalated to unprecedented levels. In messages he managed to transmit from prison, Navalny described the harrowing conditions in the solitary cell where he was held for months for various minor offenses that prison officials mercilessly accused him of, as well as sleep deprivation, meager food, and a lack of medical care. In October 2023, three of his lawyers were arrested, and two more were put on a wanted list.
In December 2023, authorities moved Navalny to a maximum-security penal colony in a remote town beyond the Arctic Circle. In February 2024, Navalny, 47, unexpectedly died there, the circumstances and cause of his death still remain a mystery. Yulia Navalny and his supporters said the Kremlin had murdered him, while authorities claimed Navalny died of “natural causes,” but did not disclose any details of what happened.
Tens of thousands of Russians flocked to his funeral in the Moscow suburbs in March in a rare show of defiance in a country where street protests and even isolated demonstrations often end in immediate arrest and imprisonment. For days after, people laid flowers at his grave, and a handful even came there yesterday.
“I dream that as many people as possible will read this book, because I think everyone will learn something new about Alexei. (Everyone) will laugh and cry a little. He was so great: strong and brave, gentle and funny. The best. "And the most expensive," wrote Yulia Navalna on the social network "Ex".
Navalny's team said that the book will be published in Russian, the language in which it was written, but sending it to his homeland and neighboring Belarus is not possible, "since delivery and the absence of customs problems cannot be guaranteed."
The Kremlin and Russian state media ignored information about the publication of the memoirs, just as they ignore many other events related to Navalny, whose name Putin and other high-ranking officials almost never mention in public.