Russia’s most popular opposition leader for a decade, Alexei Navalny, believed he would die in prison, according to his biography.
A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, died in Arctic Circle prison in February while serving 19 years for extremism charges that were widely viewed as politically related.
The New Yorker and The Times published excerpts from the book, which chronicle Navalny’s posthumous life, including his time in prison.
“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022.
“There will be no one to say goodbye to him… Every anniversary without me. I will not see my grandchildren.”
Navalny’s death earlier this year was met with shock and anger from around the world, with his party hailing him as a political activist.
Many blame Mr Putin. However, after the immediate results, the Kremlin simply said they knew he was dead.
In August 2020, Navalny was poisoned at the end of a trip to Siberia with Novichok nerve agent.
He began writing his memoir, Patriot, while undergoing specialist treatment in Germany.
After being found, he returned to Moscow in January 2021, and was immediately arrested.
Navalny spent the remaining 37 months of his life in prison, during which time he kept the diary entries collected in his memoir.
On January 17, 2022, he wrote: “The thing we should be afraid of is that we will hand over our country to be plundered by a group of liars, thieves and hypocrites.
The excerpts trace Navalny’s deteriorating life, and capture the isolation of his imprisonment, with a touch of humor.
Describing a typical day on July 1, 2022, he wrote: “At work, you sit for seven hours at a sewing machine on a chair below knee height.”
“After work, he continues to sit for several hours on a wooden bench under a statue of Putin. This is called ‘disciplinary work’.”
The Patriot will be released on October 22nd. Its US publisher Knopf is also planning a Russian version.
In its introduction to that exception, the New Yorker says that while he was in prison, Navalny was able to have his group write some of the things written on social media.
David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, wrote that “it was impossible to read Navalny’s prison diary without being moved by the sadness of his suffering, and his death”.
In the last excerpt published in the New Yorker, dated January 17, 2024, Navalny says that inmates and prison guards often asked him why he chose to return to Russia.
The answer, Navalny writes, is simple: “I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your beliefs mean something, you must be ready to stand up and make sacrifices if necessary”.
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