In the prison where he died, Vladimir Putin's opponent, who will be buried this Friday in Moscow during a ceremony under strict surveillance, continued to write to document his living conditions and keep up his fight.
Published on 03/01/2024 08:09 Updated on 03/01/2024 08:45
Reading time: 2 minutes
A picture of Alexei Navalny in prison, from where he wrote many letters, taken on September 26, 2023. (MAXIM SHIPENKOV / EPA)
Throughout his years in prison, Alexei Navalny, whose funeral will take place in Moscow on Friday, March 1, never stopped writing. The Russian opponent died in an Arctic prison on February 16, three years after his imprisonment, returning from Germany, where he had been treated for poisoning. All this time, in solitary confinement in various detention centers, Vladimir Putin's opponent wrote, fighting against the oblivion to which the Kremlin wanted to condemn him. For example, he describes a veritable “modern gulag”.
In prison, Alexei Navalny “collects” the stays in solitary confinement, like others would collect stamps. There is “nothing very original” about the prison situation in the country, he writes: the hunger, the cold, the violence, the provocations… Everything has already been described by Soviet dissidents. But the authorities have invented something new for him.
“About a month ago we put a madman in the cell opposite. He howls, growls, hits, barks. He speaks alone in three different voices. I can't get over it, can I. And at every check I start asking that we take this madman away.
Alexei Navalny
in a letter
His prison guards make his life hell
Russian propaganda is broadcast on the radio all day long. A man without any hygiene, who serves as a “bacteriological weapon,” writes Alexei Navalny, is put in his cell. The prison authorities make everyday life hell for the dissident: “Every day, as soon as the order to get up is given at 5 a.m., the Russian anthem sounds here. And immediately afterwards this song 'I am Russian'. “Imagine the painting,” he continues.
In his disciplinary barracks in a special regime colony, Alexei Navalny, who has been sentenced to 19 years in prison and has been flushed with Kremlin propaganda for years, is practicing exercises to the refrain “I'm Russian, let's force him to listen as educational work.” Despite all these hardships, Alexei Navalny tries not to lose his “relaxation,” as he writes. In his opinion, it would be “the beginning of defeat.”
And whatever happens, he knows why he's in prison. “For three years I've been answering the same question: 'But why did you come back?' There is no secret and no plan, assures Navalny, I have my country and my beliefs. If your beliefs are worth anything, you must be willing to defend them and make sacrifices if necessary. “Those in power must change,” wrote Alexei Navalny a few days before his death: “Corruption is destroying the state. Putin’s state is not viable.”