Confined to chilly, concrete cells and infrequently alone along with his books, Aleksei A. Navalny sought solace in letters. To 1 acquaintance, he wrote in July that nobody may perceive Russian jail life “with out having been right here,” including in his deadpan humor: “However there’s no must be right here.”
“In the event that they’re advised to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar,” Mr. Navalny, the Russian opposition chief, wrote to the identical acquaintance, Ilia Krasilshchik, in August. “In the event that they’re advised to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.”
Many particulars about his final months — in addition to the circumstances of his demise, which the Russian authorities introduced on Friday — stay unknown; even the whereabouts of his physique are unclear.
Mr. Navalny’s aides have mentioned little as they course of the loss. However his remaining months of life are detailed in earlier statements from him and his aides, his appearances in court docket, interviews with folks near him and excerpts from non-public letters that a number of buddies, together with Mr. Krasilshchik, shared with The New York Instances.
The letters reveal the depth of the ambition, resolve and curiosity of a frontrunner who galvanized the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin and who, supporters hope, will dwell on as a unifying image of their resistance. In addition they present how Mr. Navalny — with a wholesome ego and constant confidence that what he was doing was proper — struggled to remain related to the surface world.
At the same time as brutal jail situations took their toll on his physique — he was usually denied medical and dental therapy — there was no trace that Mr. Navalny had misplaced his readability of thoughts, his writings present.
He boasted of studying 44 books in English in a 12 months and was methodically making ready for the longer term: refining his agenda, finding out political memoirs, arguing with journalists, dishing out profession recommendation to buddies and opining on viral social media posts that his workforce despatched him.
In his public messages, Mr. Navalny, who was 47 when he died, referred to as his jailing since January 2021 his “house voyage.” By final fall, he was extra alone than ever, pressured to spend a lot of his time in solitary confinement and left with out three of his legal professionals, who had been arrested for participation in an “extremist group.”
Nonetheless, he saved up with present occasions. To a good friend, the Russian photographer Evgeny Feldman, Mr. Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump regarded “actually scary.”
“Trump will turn into president” ought to President Biden’s well being undergo, Mr. Navalny wrote from his high-security jail cell. “Doesn’t this apparent factor concern the Democrats?”
A Public Life
Mr. Navalny was capable of ship lots of of handwritten letters, because of the curious digitalization of the Russian jail system, a relic of a quick burst of liberal reform in the course of Mr. Putin’s 24-year rule. By way of a web site, folks may write to him for 40 cents a web page and obtain scans of his responses, sometimes every week or two after he despatched them, and after they handed by means of a censor.
Mr. Navalny additionally communicated with the surface world by means of his legal professionals, who held up paperwork towards the window separating them after they had been barred from passing papers. At one level, Mr. Navalny reported in 2022, jail officers coated the window in foil.
Then there have been his frequent court docket hearings on new prison circumstances introduced by the state to increase his imprisonment, or on complaints that Mr. Navalny filed about his therapy. Mr. Navalny advised Mr. Krasilshchik, a media entrepreneur now in exile in Berlin, that he loved these hearings, regardless of the rubber-stamp nature of Russia’s judicial system.
“They distract you and assist the time cross sooner,” he wrote. “As well as, they supply pleasure and a way of wrestle and pursuit.”
The court docket appearances additionally offered him a chance to point out his contempt for the system. This previous July, on the conclusion of a trial that resulted in one other 19-year sentence, Mr. Navalny advised the choose and officers within the courtroom they had been “loopy.”
“You’ve one, God-given life, and that is what you select to spend it on?” he mentioned, in response to textual content of the speech printed by his workforce.
In one in every of his final hearings, by video hyperlink in January, Mr. Navalny argued for the correct to longer meal breaks to eat the “two mugs of boiling water and two items of disgusting bread” to which he was entitled.
The attraction was rejected; certainly, all through his imprisonment, Mr. Navalny appeared to savor meals vicariously by means of others, in response to interviews. He advised Mr. Krasilshchik that he most popular doner kebabs to falafel in Berlin and took an curiosity within the Indian meals that Mr. Feldman tried in New York.
The court docket additionally dismissed his grievance about his jail’s solitary “punishment” cells, during which Mr. Navalny spent some 300 days.
The cells had been normally chilly, damp and poorly ventilated 7-feet-by-10-feet concrete areas. However Mr. Navalny was protesting one thing totally different: Inmates ordered to spend time in these cells had been allowed just one ebook.
“I wish to have 10 books in my cell,” he advised the court docket.
Books Sustained Him
Books seemed to be on the heart of Mr. Navalny’s jail life, all the way in which till his demise.
In a letter final April to Mr. Krasilshchik, Mr. Navalny defined that he most popular to be studying 10 books concurrently and “change between them.” He mentioned he got here to like memoirs: “For some cause I all the time despised them. However they’re really superb.”
He was continuously soliciting studying suggestions, but in addition distributed them. Describing jail life to Mr. Krasilshchik in a July letter, he advisable 9 books on the topic, together with a 1,012-page, three-volume set by the Soviet dissident Anatoly Marchenko.
Mr. Navalny added in that letter that he had reread “One Day within the Lifetime of Ivan Denisovich,” the searing Alexander Solzhenitsyn novel about Stalin’s gulag. Having survived a starvation strike and gone months “within the state of ‘I wish to eat,’” Mr. Navalny mentioned he solely now began to understand the depravity of the Soviet-era labor camps.
“You begin to notice the diploma of horror,” he wrote.
Across the identical time, Mr. Navalny was additionally studying about fashionable Russia. Mikhail Fishman, a liberal Russian journalist and tv host now working in exile from Amsterdam, heard from a Navalny aide that the opposition chief had learn his new ebook in regards to the assassinated opposition determine Boris Y. Nemtsov.
Mr. Fishman mentioned he was advised that Mr. Navalny appreciated the ebook, however that he seen it as too favorable to Boris N. Yeltsin, the previous Russian president.
Mr. Fishman wrote to Mr. Navalny to push again, arguing, amongst different issues, that Mr. Yeltsin hated the Ok.G.B., the scary Soviet secret police that quashed dissent. Mr. Navalny responded that he was “notably outraged” by that declare.
“Jail, investigation and trial are the identical now as within the books” of Soviet dissidents, Mr. Navalny wrote, insisting that Mr. Putin’s predecessor had failed to alter the Soviet system. “That is what I can’t forgive Yeltsin for.”
However Mr. Navalny additionally thanked Mr. Fishman for providing some particulars about his life in Amsterdam.
“Everybody normally thinks that I really want pathetic and heartbreaking phrases,” he wrote in an excerpt that Mr. Fishman shared with The Instances. “However I actually miss the day by day grind — information about life, meals, salaries, gossip.”
Kerry Kennedy, a human-rights activist and the daughter of the Democratic politician Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, additionally exchanged letters with Mr. Navalny. He advised her that he had cried “two or thrice” whereas studying a ebook about her father advisable by a good friend, in response to a duplicate of a letter, handwritten in English, that Ms. Kennedy posted on Instagram after Mr. Navalny died.
Mr. Navalny thanked Ms. Kennedy for sending him a poster with a quote from her father’s speech about how a “ripple of hope,” multiplied 1,000,000 instances, “can sweep down the mightiest partitions of oppression and resistance.”
“I hope at some point I’ll be capable of grasp it on the wall of my workplace,” Mr. Navalny wrote.
Staying Linked
The good friend who advisable the Kennedy ebook was Mr. Feldman, the Russian photographer who coated Mr. Navalny’s try to run for president in 2018. Mr. Feldman, now in exile in Latvia, mentioned he despatched no less than 37 letters to Mr. Navalny since his 2021 arrest and obtained replies to nearly all of them.
“I actually like your letters,” Mr. Navalny wrote within the final message that Mr. Feldman obtained, dated Dec. 3, excerpts from which he shared with The Instances. “They’ve obtained every little thing I like to debate: meals, politics, elections, scandalous matters and ethnicity points.”
The latter, Mr. Feldman mentioned, was a reference to their exchanges on antisemitism and the Gaza conflict. Mr. Navalny additionally described his newfound appreciation for the actor Matthew Perry, who died in October; although he had by no means watched “Mates,” Mr. Navalny was moved by an obituary he learn in The Economist.
The December letter ended with Mr. Navalny’s ideas on a preoccupation he shared with Mr. Feldman — American politics. After warning of a possible Trump presidency, Mr. Navalny concluded with a question: “Please identify one present politician you admire.”
Three days after Mr. Navalny despatched that letter, he disappeared.
Throughout a frantic, 20-day search, Mr. Navalny’s exiled allies mentioned they despatched greater than 600 requests to prisons and different authorities businesses.
On Dec. 25, Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman declared he had been present in a distant Arctic jail generally known as Polar Wolf.
“I’m your new Santa Claus,” Mr. Navalny posted on social media the following day, after his lawyer visited him. “I don’t say ‘Ho-ho-ho,’ however I say ‘Oh-oh-oh’ once I look out the window, the place there’s evening, then night after which evening once more.”
Within the Arctic
Mr. Navalny mentioned within the put up that he was taken on a circuitous route by means of the Ural Mountains to his new jail, which was labeled as a harsher “particular regime” facility.
Even on that journey, Mr. Navalny was studying books. He wrote to the journalist Sergei Parkhomenko that by the point he arrived at Polar Wolf he had learn all that he was capable of carry with him, and was pressured to select from the classics in his new jail library: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov.
“Who may’ve advised me that Chekhov is probably the most miserable Russian author?” Mr. Navalny wrote in a letter that Mr. Parkhomenko shared on Fb.
Mr. Parkhomenko mentioned he obtained the letter on Feb. 13. Not like Mr. Navalny’s earlier letters, it was handwritten on easy, squared pocket book paper and forwarded to him as {a photograph} by Yulia Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s spouse. Polar Wolf didn’t enable the digital letter-writing service supplied by his earlier jail.
It had turn into clear that the Kremlin was intent on silencing Mr. Navalny. The legal professionals who had represented him for many of his time behind bars had been in jail, whereas letters and guests would take longer to succeed in him in his new jail.
Mr. Navalny’s mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, flew to the Arctic after the announcement of his demise and, on Saturday, obtained an official discover that he had died at 2:17 p.m. the prior day.
Mr. Navalny’s legacy will dwell on, buddies and allies say, partially by means of his writings in jail. Mr. Feldman, the photographer, mentioned that Mr. Navalny’s authorized workforce advised him that the opposition chief had responded to no less than a few of the letters Mr. Feldman despatched in latest weeks.
“Actually, I take into consideration this with horror,” Mr. Feldman mentioned. “If the censors allow them to by means of, I’ll be getting letters from him for the following a number of months.”
Mr. Krasilshchik, the media entrepreneur, mentioned he was left to ruminate on the final letter he obtained, in September. Mr. Navalny concluded it by positing that if South Korea and Taiwan had been capable of make the transition from dictatorship to democracy, then maybe Russia may, too.
“Hope. I’ve obtained no downside with it,” Mr. Navalny wrote.
He signed off: “Hold writing! A.”
Neil MacFarquhar, Oleg Matsnev and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
