The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny believed he would die in prison, excerpts from his memoir reveal.
Navalny was the most prominent foe of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in Russia. He died in a remote Arctic prison in February while serving a 19-year sentence on several charges, including running an extremist group, which he said were politically motivated.
The New Yorker and the Times have published extracts from his book, Patriot, which will be released on 22 October.
Navalny was jailed in 2021 after returning from Germany where he had been recuperating from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin, and was given three prison terms. Russian officials have vehemently denied involvement in the poisoning and in Navalny’s death.
Patriot was announced in April by the publisher Alfred A Knopf, which called it Navalny’s “final letter to the world”. According to Knopf, Navalny began working on the book while recovering from the poisoning and continued writing it in Russia, both in and out of prison.
On 22 March 2022, he wrote: “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.”
Although he had accepted his fate, Navalny’s memoir conveys a resolute stance against official corruption in Russia.
Also on 22 March, Navalny wrote: “My approach to the situation is certainly not one of contemplative passivity. I am trying to do everything I can from here to put an end to authoritarianism (or, more modestly, to contribute to ending it).”
In a published excerpt dated 17 January 2024, a month before his death, Navalny answers the question posed by his fellow inmates and prison guards: “Why did you come back?”
He wrote: “I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.”
As well as capturing the isolation and challenges of his imprisonment, Navalny’s writing is also notable for its humour. He recounts a bet with his lawyers over the length of a new prison sentence: “Olga reckoned 11 to 15 years. Vadim surprised everyone with his prediction of precisely 12 years and six months. I guessed seven to eight years and was the winner.”
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He also marvelled at the absurdity of being made to sit for “hours on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin” as a “disciplinary activity”.
He describes the discomfort of being on hunger strike and of being freezing cold all the time, adding wryly: “I still don’t have a six-pack.”
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a statement released in April by the publisher that the book was not only a testament “to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship”, adding that sharing his story would “inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter”.
She also said the memoir had been translated into 11 languages and would “definitely” be published in Russian.
