In his posthumous memoir, compiled with help from his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny faced the fact that Vladimir Putin might succeed in silencing him. The book will keep “his legacy alive,” Navalnaya said.

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.

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  • @nawaEnglish
    24•1 month ago

    There’s even opponents to Putin who’ve had more electoral success than getting 27% in a mayoral election.

    And I’m sure you have the list at hand and ready to inform me, since me, a Russian who lived in Russia until the war started, has no idea who the hell you’re talking about. Please include the examples after 2010 at least, the political activity before that is not super relevant.

      • @nawaEnglish
        14•1 month ago

        I’m waiting for some names, my dude.

        Also, LDPR, KPRF and any other smaller bullshit is not opposition, any other opinion is uninformed and/or pro-Putin. Yabloko was opposition until about 2016 but not for longer.