What do these letters, written by a Russian dissident while he was in prison, reveal?

In prison he died, an opponent of Vladimir Putin, who is to be buried in a closely watched ceremony in Moscow this Friday, has continued to write to document his lifestyle and maintain his fight.

During all the years of his detention, Alexei Navalny, whose funeral takes place in Moscow on Friday, March 1, never stopped writing. The Russian dissident died in an Arctic prison on February 16, three years after being imprisoned, after returning from Germany where he was treated after being poisoned. All this time, he was held in solitary confinement in various detention centers, writes an opponent of Vladimir Putin, thus fighting the oblivion that the Kremlin intends to condemn him to. It describes, for example, a real “The Modern-Day Gulag”.

In prison, Alexei Navalny said:collect“Living in solitary confinement, as others collect stamps. On the state of prisons in the country, “Nothing too original”, Hunger, cold, violence, incitement… all described by Soviet dissidents, he writes. But for that the officials have found something new.

“About a month ago, we put a lunatic in the opposite cell. He cries, roars, hits, barks. He speaks to himself in three different voices. I can’t get over him. And at every check, I begin. Asking that we remove this strangeness.”

Alexei Navalny

In a letter

His jailers make him live in hell

On the radio, Russian propaganda is broadcast throughout the day. A man without any cleanliness, serving, “Bacteriological weapon”, writes Alexeï Navalny, is placed in his cell. The prison administration makes the daily life of the disaffected a living hell: “Here, every day, as soon as the order to get up at 5 a.m. is played, the Russian national anthem is played. And immediately after this song is ‘I am Russian’. Imagine the picture.“, he continues.

In his disciplinary barracks in a special regime colony, Alexei Navalny, sentenced to 19 years in prison, washed up by years of Kremlin propaganda, exercises for the chorus. i am russian, which he is forced to listen to as an academic work. Despite all these challenges, Alexei Navalny “doesn’t want to lose” himself.rest”, As he writes. This will happen “The Beginning of Defeat” According to him.

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