Navalny's final months, in his own words: Trump, Indian food, books

By Anton Troianovski

Confined to cold, concrete cells and often alone with his books, Aleksei A Navalny sought solace in letters. To one acquaintance, he wrote in July that no one could understand Russian prison life “without having been here,” adding in his deadpan humour: “But there’s no need to be here.”

“If they’re told to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar,” Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, wrote to the same acquaintance, Ilia Krasilshchik, in August. “If they’re told to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.”

Many details about his last months — as well as the circumstances of his death, which the Russian authorities announced on Friday.

 Navalny’s aides have said little as they process the loss. But his final months of life are detailed in previous statements from him and his aides, his appearances in court, interviews with people close to him and excerpts from private letters that several friends, including  Krasilshchik, shared with The New York Times.

The letters reveal the depth of the ambition, resolve and curiosity of a leader who galvanised the opposition to President Vladimir Putin and who, supporters hope, will live on as a unifying symbol of their resistance.  Even as brutal prison conditions took their toll on his body — he was often denied medical and dental treatment — there was no hint that Navalny had lost his clarity of mind, his writings show. He boasted of reading 44 books in English in a year and was methodically preparing for the future: Refining his agenda, studying political memoirs, arguing with journalists, dispensing career advice to friends and opining on viral social media posts that his team sent him. In his public messages, Navalny, who was 47 when he died, called his jailing since January 2021 his “space voyage.” By last fall, he was more alone than ever, forced to spend much of his time in solitary confinement and left without three of his lawyers, who were arrested for participation in an “extremist group.”

Still, he kept up with current events. To a friend, the Russian photographer Evgeny Feldman, Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former US President Donald J. Trump looked “really scary.” “Trump will become president” should President Biden’s health suffer, Navalny wrote from his high-security prison cell. “Doesn’t this obvious thing concern the Democrats?”

In one of his last hearings  in January, Navalny argued for the right to longer meal breaks to consume the “two mugs of boiling water and two pieces of disgusting bread” to which he was entitled.  The appeal was rejected; indeed, throughout his imprisonment, Navalny seemed to savour food vicariously through others, according to interviews.  He told Krasilshchik that he preferred doner kebabs to falafel in Berlin and took an interest in the Indian food that Feldman tried in New York.

©2023 The New York Times News Service