what these letters written by the Russian opponent reveal when he was in prison

In prison where he died, the opponent of Vladimir Putin, who is to be buried this Friday in Moscow during a ceremony under close surveillance, has continued to write to document his living conditions and maintain his fight.

During all his years of detention, Alexeï Navalny, whose funeral takes place on Friday March 1 in Moscow, never stopped writing. The Russian opponent died in prison in the Arctic on February 16, three years after being imprisoned, returning from Germany where he had been treated following poisoning. During all this time, placed in solitary confinement in different detention centers, the opponent of Vladimir Putin wrote, thus fighting against the oblivion to which the Kremlin intended to condemn him. He describes, for example, a real “modern-day gulag”.

In prison, Alexei Navalny said:collect“stays in solitary confinement, like others would collect stamps. On the situation of prisons in the country, “nothing very original”, he writes, the hunger, the cold, the violence, the provocations… Everything has already been described by Soviet dissidents. But for him, the authorities have invented something new.

“About a month ago, we installed a madman in the cell opposite. He makes howls, growls, hits, barks. He speaks alone in three different voices. I can’t get over it not. And at each check, I start by asking that we take this weirdo away”

Alexei Navalny

in a letter

His jailers make him live hell

On a radio, Russian propaganda is broadcast all day long. A man without any hygiene, serving, “bacteriological weapon”, writes Alexeï Navalny, is placed in his cell. The prison administration makes the dissident’s daily life hell: “Here, every day, as soon as the order is given to get up at 5 a.m., the Russian anthem sounds. And immediately after this song ‘I am Russian’. Imagine the picture“, he continues.

In his disciplinary barracks in a special regime colony, Alexeï Navalny, sentenced to 19 years in prison, rinsed by Kremlin propaganda for years, exercises to the chorus of I am Russian, which he is forced to listen to as educational work. Despite all these challenges, Alexeï Navalny seeks not to lose his “relaxation”, as he writes. It would be “the beginning of defeat” according to him.

And, whatever happens, he knows why he is in prison. “For three years I have been answering the same question: ‘But why did you come back?’ There are no secrets or plans, assures Navalny, I have my country and my beliefs. If your beliefs are worth anything, you must be prepared to defend them and, if necessary, accept sacrifices.” “The people in power must change”wrote Alexei Navalny, just a few days before his death: “Corruption destroys the state. The Putinian state is not viable”.