Aleksei A. Navalny knew he would likely die in prison.
In messages to his supporters posted on social media, Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, often struck a hopeful note about the future of his country, or a comic one, joking about the absurdities and indignities of prison life.
But in the journal entries he managed to write and smuggle out of prison, he was more introspective, and blunt: “I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life — either the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime,” Navalny wrote in his diary in March 2022. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.”
He reflected on what that would mean: missing birthdays, anniversaries, his children’s graduations. Never meeting his grandchildren. The thought made him want to scream and smash things, he wrote. But then he thought of other Russian dissidents who had suffered similar fates. “I resigned myself and accept it,” he wrote.
So there’s a few things to note; firstly, that this article isn’t a eulogy, but about the smuggling and content of his diaries. Regardless of his political positions, those diaries are a fascinating artifact in their own right, especially his perspectives on Russian politics, and the experience of a political prisoner in the Russian prison system.
Also worth consideration is that his views/rhetoric shifted massively over the years, and he became far more liberal as he aged. People who manage to shift away from the far right are a valuable resource in understanding the thought process of other people who think like that.