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Confined to chilly, concrete cells and infrequently alone together with his books, Aleksei A. Navalny sought solace in letters. To at least one 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 informed 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 informed 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 last 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 associates, 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. Additionally 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 skin world.
Whilst brutal jail situations took their toll on his physique — he was usually denied medical and dental remedy — 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, shelling out profession recommendation to associates 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, compelled 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 seemed “actually scary.”
“Trump will develop 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 a whole bunch 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. Via an internet site, folks may write to him for 40 cents a web page and obtain scans of his responses, usually per week or two after he despatched them, and after they handed by a censor.
Mr. Navalny additionally communicated with the skin world by his legal professionals, who held up paperwork in opposition to 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 legal instances introduced by the state to increase his imprisonment, or on complaints that Mr. Navalny filed about his remedy. Mr. Navalny informed 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 move quicker,” he wrote. “As well as, they supply pleasure and a way of battle and pursuit.”
The court docket appearances additionally offered him a possibility 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 informed the choose and officers within the courtroom they had been “loopy.”
“You might have one, God-given life, and that is what you select to spend it on?” he mentioned, based on textual content of the speech printed by his workforce.
In certainly one of his final hearings, by video hyperlink in January, Mr. Navalny argued for the proper to longer meal breaks to eat the “two mugs of boiling water and two items of disgusting bread” to which he was entitled.
The enchantment was rejected; certainly, all through his imprisonment, Mr. Navalny appeared to savor meals vicariously by others, based on interviews. He informed Mr. Krasilshchik that he most well-liked 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, wherein 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 guide.
“I need to have 10 books in my cell,” he informed 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 well-liked to be studying 10 books concurrently and “swap between them.” He mentioned he got here to like memoirs: “For some cause I all the time despised them. However they’re truly wonderful.”
He was steadily soliciting studying suggestions, but additionally allotted them. Describing jail life to Mr. Krasilshchik in a July letter, he really helpful 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 need to eat,’” Mr. Navalny mentioned he solely now began to understand the depravity of the Soviet-era labor camps.
“You begin to understand the diploma of horror,” he wrote.
Across the identical time, Mr. Navalny was additionally studying about trendy 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 guide concerning the assassinated opposition determine Boris Y. Nemtsov.
Mr. Fishman mentioned he was informed that Mr. Navalny appreciated the guide, however that he considered 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 “significantly 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 vary the Soviet system. “That is what I can not 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 every 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 informed her that he had cried “two or thrice” whereas studying a guide about her father really helpful by a good friend, based on 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 one million instances, “can sweep down the mightiest partitions of oppression and resistance.”
“I hope sooner or later I’ll be capable of cling it on the wall of my workplace,” Mr. Navalny wrote.
Staying Related
The good friend who really helpful the Kennedy guide 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 a minimum of 37 letters to Mr. Navalny since his 2021 arrest and acquired replies to nearly all of them.
“I actually like your letters,” Mr. Navalny wrote within the final message that Mr. Feldman acquired, dated Dec. 3, excerpts from which he shared with The Instances. “They’ve received 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 warfare. 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 title 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 companies.
On Dec. 25, Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman declared he had been present in a distant Arctic jail often 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’ after I look out the window, the place there may be evening, then night after which evening once more.”
Within the Arctic
Mr. Navalny mentioned within the submit that he was taken on a circuitous route by the Ural Mountains to his new jail, which was categorised 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 compelled to select from the classics in his new jail library: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov.
“Who may’ve informed me that Chekhov is essentially the most miserable Russian author?” Mr. Navalny wrote in a letter that Mr. Parkhomenko shared on Fb.
Mr. Parkhomenko mentioned he acquired the letter on Feb. 13. In contrast to 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 provided by his earlier jail.
It had develop 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, acquired an official discover that he had died at 2:17 p.m. the prior day.
Mr. Navalny’s legacy will dwell on, associates and allies say, partially by his writings in jail. Mr. Feldman, the photographer, mentioned that Mr. Navalny’s authorized workforce informed him that the opposition chief had responded to a minimum of a number of the letters Mr. Feldman despatched in latest weeks.
“Truthfully, I take into consideration this with horror,” Mr. Feldman mentioned. “If the censors allow them to by, 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 acquired, 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 received no drawback with it,” Mr. Navalny wrote.
He signed off: “Preserve writing! A.”
Neil MacFarquhar, Oleg Matsnev and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
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