Not everyone wants to read a book when they already know what happens in the end. In the case of Patriot, there is the added discomfort of reading the words of a dead man. For its author, Alexei Navalny, died last year in detention in Russia.
There can be little doubt that he was murdered.
The book begins with him boarding a near-fatal flight to Moscow from Tomsk, in Siberia, on August 20 2020.
It was after the plane was in the air that Navalny, a serious thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, first realised he had been poisoned. He was taken to a Russian hospital where he would almost certainly have died, but the intervention of then German chancellor Angela Merkel ensured he was brought to her country, where his life was saved.
With characteristic good humour, Navalny recalls being told what had happened to him, as he regained consciousness in a German hospital bed. “They told me at length and in detail that Putin had tried to murder me while I was travelling around Siberia; that independent laboratories had confirmed I was poisoned and, moreover, with the same chemical agent the Russian secret services had used to poison the Skripals in Salisbury. And then when, yet again, they said the word ‘Novichok’, I suddenly looked straight at them and said, ‘What the fuck? That’s just so dumb!’”
This remarkable book takes us through Navalny’s life, his political awakening, his move into activism and, finally, there is the prison diary that was written during his incarceration until his death (murder) in February 2024.
He recounts the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin, and the advent of Putin.
After what seems to have been a happy and normal childhood, Navalny studied law and became a lawyer. He married and had children. He attended the Yale World Fellows programme in the US for a brief period.
Not many of us know what life was like in the former Soviet Union, and this biographical account was absorbing and revealing. It wasn’t the life we in the West know as normal, but it was a way of life, with friends, family, work and play.
Disgusted by the corruption that persisted in his country as it moved from a communist dictatorship to a playground for the oligarchs and politicians skilled in self-enrichment, Navalny moved into active politics, where it seems he had a natural flair for organisation and for getting out his message.
That was good for him, and bad for Putin.
Navalny’s use of the internet, social media and increasingly sophisticated documentary filmmaking not only helped to spread his message to millions and expose many incidents of corruption, but it also made him too dangerous to ignore.
One of the most depressing aspects of this book is the detail given of the justice system, of the kangaroo courts where defendants stood no hope of a fair hearing.
Some might question why Navalny did not stay in exile in Germany after the poisoning, but instead opted to return to Russia in January 2021, where he was immediately arrested.
The title of the book gives a clue. He was a patriot, who realised the dangers he faced, but his love for his country compelled him to make the ultimate sacrifice. “I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life — either for the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime,” he wrote.
As a Christian, the example of Jesus and his own firm faith guided and comforted him.
If Navalny emerges as the hero of this book, there can be no doubt of who the villain is. Putin has a bloody record in dealing with his opponents — it has become almost routine for his enemies to die after voluntarily jumping out of a window.
The war crimes committed in Ukraine and elsewhere have made Putin a pariah in the free world. Even his good chum Cyril Ramaphosa was unable to host him (due to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Russian leader) in 2023 when SA convened the Johannesburg summit of Brics leaders. I recall sitting in the Sandton Convention Centre and watching Putin on a video link from Moscow, while the other Brics heads of government were being hosted in Johannesburg.
Navalny is unambiguous about how dangerous the Russian president can be. “There’s one specific madman named Vladimir Putin. And sometimes something twists in his brain, he writes a name down on a piece of paper and says, ‘Kill him,’” he wrote.
Only a fool would believe that there was never a scrap of paper with Putin’s handwriting, featuring Navalny’s name.
The later section of the book featuring the prison diaries is the most moving and impressive part of the book, though no detail is offered on how these writings reached the publishers.
They detail the turn of the screw, the increasingly harsh treatment Navalny received, the punishment, and the foolish, aggressive and petty rules and regulations he endured. He suffered from a bad back, and discomfort spread to his legs, but he received no proper medical care. So, in March 2021, he went on a hunger strike and was hospitalised. Eventually, he did receive some treatment.
At the end of 2023, he was sent to a prison beyond the Arctic Circle, and the book states that “on February 16 2024, Alexei Navalny was killed in that prison”.
The prison diaries contain no self-pity or whingeing. Instead, we read of resilience, survival and small pleasures. When possible, he would have a Sunday treat of bread and butter, while the food parcels and supplies he and his supporters were able to purchase from the prison shop meant he could put together a salad. Sour cream and salt were luxuries when he could get hold of them, as was a cup of coffee with milk. Small things, perhaps, but these small things boosted his morale.
Having enjoyed music all his life, Navalny gives some commentary on the music that blared out in the prison, at deafening volume, when he was exercising. TV was available, but as it was Russian TV, there was not much accurate reporting. For a while, he could watch Euronews, but then was no longer available.
The Russian prison system would have broken many people — the strip-searches before and after any court appearance, the petty rules that prevented one prisoner from offering food to another, the solitary confinement for imagined breaches of the rules. Throughout all this Navalny remained strong, resolute and incredibly determined. He would not conform, and he would not shut up.
So, he had to be silenced.
Patriot is a disturbing but also immensely uplifting book, and a fitting legacy of a brave and truly remarkable man.
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