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| Navalny's last words for everyone to read |
When Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was seriously poisoned in August 2020 and recovered in Germany for several months, many warned him not to return to Russia, for fear he could be jailed for a long time.
But Navalny was determined and returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, and despite tens of journalists recording his every move in the airport, he was promptly detained at passport control for violating his parole conditions when he was in Germany recovering.
Why did he go back, knowing this could happen? He explains why in his memoir, Patriot, published posthumously in 2024. His wife Yulia and the Estate of Alexei Navalny own the copyright of the book, which was translated from Russian.
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| Navalny and his wife Yulia |
The memoir spans 479 pages, and Navalny explains in his own words his childhood growing up in a military town near Obninsk, where the first Soviet nuclear reactor was built. He was nine years old when the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded, and his family knew the government was hiding the truth and tried to force the residents there to continue with their daily lives.
Eventually these people were evacuated and dispersed wherever there was accommodation.
To Navalny, the Chernobyl disaster and how it was handled left a very strong impression on him.
"The question most puzzling even to my ten-year-old self was why the authorities were lying like this when everybody around me knew the truth. What kind of pathetic attempt at deception was this? If you are going to lie, you should at least be expecting to benefit from it in some way. You claim to be sick and you don't have to go school; that at least makes sense. But what was the point of these lies? Describing the way the Soviet Union worked, Vasily Shukshin, a Russian writer, memorably said, "Lies, lies, lies... Lies as redemption, lies as atonement for guilt, lies a goal achieved, lies as a career, as prosperity, as medals, as an apartment... Lies! The whole of Russia was covered in lies, like scab." An excellent description of the situation."
At that age Navalny not only knew what was happening, but also thought what the state was doing was wrong and decided to do something about it.
His father was from Ukraine, his mother from northern Russia. Navalny says: "Quizzed for the umpteenth time as to whether I was Ukrainian or Russian, I did my best to avoid a straight answer. It was like being asked whom you loved more, your mother or your father, to which no sensible answer is possible."
Navalny says early on it was his family who taught him to love his country -- not the state. "There was never any talk about whether we ought to emigrate, and I can imagine no circumstances in which there might have been. How could you emigrate when your country is here, when the language you speak is here, and Russians are the world's most wonderful people? A good people with a bad state."
Navalny talks about life in his teen years and deciding he wanted to study law, these were the options for university that his friend jokingly described:
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| Navalny in prison |
1. The law faculty of Moscow State University, which the whole of Moscow was fighting to get into;
2. The law faculty of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where admission was restricted to string-pulling KGB families and other Soviet elites;
3. The People's Friendship University of Russia, whose students came mainly from Africa or were future KGB agents assigned to spy on those students.
He became a lawyer and after Vladimir Putin came to power, Navalny joined opposition parties, even those on the far right. His legal knowledge would become very helpful, particularly when he became an activist shareholder and disrupted meetings when he asked company officials embarrassing questions on expenditures with the media present.
It seems it was love at first sight when he spotted Yulia during a business trip in Turkey. They got on so well that they moved in together six months after meeting, married two years later. From his admiration of her, it seems they are completely in tune with each other.
Navalny explains how opposition parties operated, and got involved in politics from the grassroots level, and gathered support as he exposed the corruption in their areas. The number of views of his videos reached millions.
To him, the embezzlement of money hindered people's social and economic mobility, as well as the economic development of the country. He has shown through reports and videos the billions of dollars that senior Russian officials took and were used to buy property overseas, or build extravagant villas in the country, while ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet or battling bureaucracy on a daily basis.
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| He makes a heart symbol to Yulia in the dock |
"If you were to ask me whether I hate Vladimir Putin, my answer would be, yes, I hate him, but not because he tried to kill me or put my brother in prison. I hate Putin because he has stolen the last twenty years from Russia. These could have been incredible years, the sort of period that we've never had in our history. We had no enemies. We had peace on all our borders. The price of oil, gas, and our other natural resources was incredibly high. We earned huge amounts from our exports. Putin could have used these years to turn Russia into a prosperous country. All of us could have lived better.
"Instead twenty million people live below the poverty line. Part of the money Putin and his cronies simply stole; part of it was squandered. They did nothing good for our country, and that is their worst crime against our children and the country's future."
The last third of the book Navalny details his life in prison from February 2021 until 2024 [he died February 2024] in diary form. He gives detailed insight into what it is like to live behind bars, how he is treated, and how prison officials try to break his spirit with increasingly terrible conditions, or preventing him from seeing his lawyers and family members. Physically it is trying for his body, but Navalny believes others have it worse than him.
For a long time his family can help him buy food, and he is able to make coffee in his cell, and eat salad and bread; one fan sends him a cake. He can also order books and amasses a big collection. Oh and he received a lot of fan mail in prison, and dutifully replies to each of them.
Near the beginning of the book, Navalny mentions Daniel Roher, the director who filmed the documentary Navalny, and towards the end of the tome, his lawyer shouts to him on a video link that the film won Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
"I had a very strange feeling at that moment. It was as if those words didn't belong in this world, but, on the other hand, everything here is so weird and crazy that this world is the only one they belong in."
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| Yulia spoke at the Academy Awards |
He goes on to thank everyone involved in the documentary, in particular Christo Grozev, the Bellingcat investigative reporter who investigated Navalny's poisoning.
On his birthday, June 4, 2023, Navalny writes how the prison psychologist is amazed that he is mentally fit despite all the torturous conditions he has encountered. His take:
"Let's face it, of course I wish I didn't have to wake up in this hellhole and could instead have breakfast with my family, receive kisses on the cheek from my children, unwrap presents, and say, "Wow, this is exactly what I dreamed of!" But life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. And the day will come when speaking the truth and advocating for justice will be commonplace and not dangerous in Russia."
He says this many times, how he strongly believes in having convictions, that there needs to be free elections, a fair legal system and no censorship.
But will Russia change? With Navalny gone, who will continue fighting for ordinary Russians?
Some may describe Navalny as stubborn, an idealist, a fighter.
But above all, he is a patriot, who loves his country and only wants to see it in a better place.
