Courage
Instead of obsessing over Trump’s Cabinet picks, I read the story of a man who gave his life pursuing freedom and happiness for his country.
The book is Patriot, by Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who stood up to Putin and as a consequence was harassed, arrested, charged with multiple made-up crimes, poisoned and ultimately imprisoned in today’s gulags, where he suffered three years of ever-increasing isolation, physical suffering and psychological torture as he was hauled from one miserable, freezing prison camp to another.
He died in February 2024 in Russia’s coldest, harshest prison, “Polar Wolf,” north of the Arctic Circle.
Navalny’s memoir is wry and self-mocking, even as he suffered crippling back pain – for which he wasn’t treated – and wasted away from his robust 200-plus frame to a skeletal 160 pounds.
He writes about the life he and his wife Yulia might have enjoyed if he hadn’t returned to Russia in 2021 and been arrested as soon as he got off his plane: They would savor a “decadent brunch” of oysters and champagne in New York City, recognized as famous political exiles and “such a delightful couple, if only they didn’t drink vodka at nine in the morning.”
He chose a different fate: “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to.”
He laughs that he once thought being jailed “will be all to the good for you, because then I will have heaps of time for writing.”
But, “I was dreadfully, indeed catastrophically, mistaken…. There is no time to read, let alone write. Here you are by no means the sage captive seated next to a stack of books; you are a blockhead in a wet fur hat who is constantly being marched off somewhere.”
Navalny was jailed and murdered because he was a gifted politician.
He understood political organization – and, especially, communication. A good writer, he learned that “the vast majority of the population – intelligent folks – don’t actually want to read. They want to watch something. When I learned this, I was deeply upset, but that’s how things are.”
So, he learned to make videos, especially one about the Putin gang’s corruption and Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea. Millions of Russians watched it.
He kept his message simple. Putin’s crowd was all “crooks and thieves.” And “sadly, the whole system of power in our beautiful country, and everything that’s happening, is based on endless lies.”
He loved Russia. His goal was simple: “Russia Will Be Happy.”
In the last words he wrote in prison, Navalny prophesied that the “Putinist state,” built on “lies and nothing but lies … will crumble and collapse…. One day, we will look at it, and it won’t be there. Victory is inevitable.
“But for now, we must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs.”
Earlier, he wrote that Russian politics is a tug of war between “a tin-pot tsar who wants to arrogate to himself the right to personal, unaccountable power” and “honest people who are not afraid of him.”
Navalny said, “I tried my utmost to tug my end of the rope.”
If you’re sick and angry about American politics, take a dose of Navalny. And tug your end of the rope.
Courage
Instead of obsessing over Trump’s Cabinet picks, I read the story of a man who gave his life pursuing freedom and happiness for his country.
The book is Patriot, by Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who stood up to Putin and as a consequence was harassed, arrested, charged with multiple made-up crimes, poisoned and ultimately imprisoned in today’s gulags, where he suffered three years of ever-increasing isolation, physical suffering and psychological torture as he was hauled from one miserable, freezing prison camp to another.
He died in February 2024 in Russia’s coldest, harshest prison, “Polar Wolf,” north of the Arctic Circle.
Navalny’s memoir is wry and self-mocking, even as he suffered crippling back pain – for which he wasn’t treated – and wasted away from his robust 200-plus frame to a skeletal 160 pounds.
He writes about the life he and his wife Yulia might have enjoyed if he hadn’t returned to Russia in 2021 and been arrested as soon as he got off his plane: They would savor a “decadent brunch” of oysters and champagne in New York City, recognized as famous political exiles and “such a delightful couple, if only they didn’t drink vodka at nine in the morning.”
He chose a different fate: “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to.”
He laughs that he once thought being jailed “will be all to the good for you, because then I will have heaps of time for writing.”
But, “I was dreadfully, indeed catastrophically, mistaken…. There is no time to read, let alone write. Here you are by no means the sage captive seated next to a stack of books; you are a blockhead in a wet fur hat who is constantly being marched off somewhere.”
Navalny was jailed and murdered because he was a gifted politician.
He understood political organization – and, especially, communication. A good writer, he learned that “the vast majority of the population – intelligent folks – don’t actually want to read. They want to watch something. When I learned this, I was deeply upset, but that’s how things are.”
So, he learned to make videos, especially one about the Putin gang’s corruption and Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea. Millions of Russians watched it.
He kept his message simple. Putin’s crowd was all “crooks and thieves.” And “sadly, the whole system of power in our beautiful country, and everything that’s happening, is based on endless lies.”
He loved Russia. His goal was simple: “Russia Will Be Happy.”
In the last words he wrote in prison, Navalny prophesied that the “Putinist state,” built on “lies and nothing but lies … will crumble and collapse…. One day, we will look at it, and it won’t be there. Victory is inevitable.
“But for now, we must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs.”
Earlier, he wrote that Russian politics is a tug of war between “a tin-pot tsar who wants to arrogate to himself the right to personal, unaccountable power” and “honest people who are not afraid of him.”
Navalny said, “I tried my utmost to tug my end of the rope.”
If you’re sick and angry about American politics, take a dose of Navalny. And tug your end of the rope.