| In today’s newsletter, excerpts from the late Russian dissident’s upcoming memoir. And then: • War comes to Beirut
• The poker election
• What “The Apprentice” misses about Trump | | | |
| David Remnick
Editor, The New Yorker Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anticorruption campaigner, saw the darkest version of his future plainly. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he writes in his diary, in an entry from March of 2022. He had returned to his home country a little more than a year before, after surviving an assassination attempt at the hands of the Russian security services. He was arrested at the airport. “I didn’t manage to take a single step on the soil of my country as a free man,” he writes. Like many dissidents before him, Navalny cultivated what he called a “prison Zen.” He was not merely the sum of his politics, his insistence on a free Russia; he was also determined to prove exemplary as a human spirit. “The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge,” he writes, “but to move instantly to acceptance. That can be hard.” Throughout his diary, excerpts of which we are honored to share today with our readers, Navalny writes with a fierce moral clarity about the inhumanity of Vladimir Putin’s regime, and about the power of its opposite force—the humanity of his fellow-countrymen. The diary, which is part of his forthcoming posthumous memoir, “Patriot,” is written in a prose that is direct, precise, and, in the face of unimaginable isolation, mordantly funny. “Some people collect stamps. Some collect coins. And I have a growing collection of amazing court trials,” he writes. Navalny refers to a joking bet made with his lawyers, trying to predict the duration of his latest sham sentence. (His is the most accurate guess.) Unable to send a gift for his son’s fourteenth birthday—or do the far more desired thing, be there to hug him—he chides himself for his absence: “Let’s face it, you don’t get to choose your parents. Some kids get stuck with jailbirds.” Of his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, a dedicated activist and his most ardent defender, Navalny writes teasingly, “When you are looking for a wife, be sure to check the potential spouse to see whether she has been registered as a juvenile delinquent. I didn’t do that and here I am.” It’s impossible to read Navalny’s prison diary without being outraged by the tragedy of his suffering, and by his death, in February, in a prison camp north of the Arctic Circle. Yet, again and again, we read an exhortation to live bravely in the face of cruelty. “Don’t be afraid of anything,” Navalny insists. “This is our country and it’s the only one we have.” I hope you will read these excerpts. Navalny’s writing is inspiring, emboldening—a voice that will not be forgotten. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | |
| P.S. When Alexei Navalny was emerging as a major reformer, in 2011, Julia Ioffe spoke to many people in Russia about the importance and danger of his work. One of those people was Navalny’s mother. “I believe in what he’s doing, he’s doing the right thing, but I’m not ready,” she said. “I’m not ready for my son to become a martyr.” | | | |
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