#patriot navalny

[enchantedephiphany]

Read the book here

(Since staying at my aunt's, i appreciate just sitting in nature-- soaks into your soul and helps heal you on a cellular level)

I found a pencil in the woods! (Absorbing some of Navalny's appreciation for small things .. i suppose not taking things for granted snd enjoying what does spark joy is a good lesson to learn from prison... someone who went thru it. Hopefully i never go to actual prison)

I come home to these guys ^

>

[asgoodeasgold]

(🔊 on) Patriot, Alexei Navalny's memoir, is available as an audiobook read by Matthew Goode.

A stunning and poignant account beautifully narrated 🧡

Here is a little extract - Alexei wakes up from a coma after having been poisoned and he remembers his wife pulling him through.

"But I will tell you what I do remember. Perhaps, actually, it can’t even be properly described as a remembering. It is more a collection of my very first sensations and emotions. It was so important to me, though, that it is now forever imprinted in my brain. I am lying there. I have already been brought out of the coma, but can’t recognize anybody and don’t understand what is happening. I can’t speak and don’t know what speaking is. My sole pastime is to be waiting for Her to come. Who She is I am uncertain. Neither do I even know what She looks like. If I manage to make out something with my unfocusing eyes, I’m unable to remember the picture. But She is different, that much is clear to me. So I just lie there and wait for Her. She comes and is the main person in the room. She straightens my pillow and makes it very comfortable. She doesn’t have a low, sympathizing voice but speaks cheerfully and laughs. She is telling me something. When She is near, my idiotic hallucinations retreat. It feels very good when She is there. Then She goes away and I feel sad, and wait for Her again. I don’t for a moment doubt there is a scientific explanation for this. Like, you know, I was apprehending the tone of my wife’s voice, my brain secreted dopamine, and I began to feel better. Each visit became literally therapeutic, and the effect of waiting for her enhanced the dopamine reinforcement. But no matter how impressive the scientific and medical explanation sounds, I now know for sure, simply from my own experience, that love heals and brings you back to life. Yulia, you saved me, and may this be included in the neurobiology textbooks."

This made me cry hot tears 🥺🥺

The audiobook is available on several platforms. More info ➡️ https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/445409/patriot-by-navalny-alexei/9781529943788

📷 My edit from Audible audiobook (Penguin Books). MG photograph by Uli Webber.

[justforbooks]

Patriot by Alexei Navalny

The late Russian activist’s memoir is an insightful, sharp, even humorous account of his fight against Putin’s regime – and a warning to the world

Alexei Navalny was watching his favourite cartoon show, Rick and Morty, when he suddenly felt unwell. He was 21 minutes into an episode where Rick turns into a pickle. The late Russian opposition leader was on a flight back to Moscow after campaigning ahead of regional elections in the Siberian city of Tomsk in August 2020. Something was clearly wrong, and Navalny staggered to the bathroom.

There, he recalls, he had the grim realisation: “I’m done for.” He told a sceptical steward that he’d been poisoned and then lay down calmly in the aisle, facing a wall. Life didn’t flash before his eyes. Instead, he compares his experience of death – or near-death, as it turned out – to something from a dark fantasy. It was like being “kissed by a Dementor and a Nazgûl stands nearby”.

He is clear who gave the order to kill him with the nerve agent novichok: Vladimir Putin. Navalny calls Russia’s president a “bribe-taking old man” and a “vengeful runt” who sits on top of a “sinister regime”. The assassins were members of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. Navalny spent 18 days in a coma, waking up in hospital in Germany.

It was while recovering in Freiburg that he wrote the first part of his extraordinary memoir, Patriot. The second section consists of letters from prison, following his January 2021 return to Moscow, when he was dramatically arrested at the airport. Navalny says he embarked on an autobiography knowing the Kremlin could finish him off. “If they do finally whack me, this book will be my memorial,” he notes.

It took three years for his gallows humour prophecy to come true. Navalny died in February this year, his likely murder taking place in an Arctic penal colony. He was 47. Prison documents hint he was poisoned and the authorities removed the evidence: clothes, vomit, even snow he had come into contact with.

This is a brave and brilliant book, a luminous account of Navalny’s life and dark times. It is a challenge from beyond the grave to Russia’s murder-addicted rulers. You can hear his voice in the deft translation by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel: sharp, playful and lacking in self-pity. Nothing crushes him. Up until the end – his final “polar” entry is on 17 January 2024 – he radiates indomitable good humour.

Patriot includes a manifesto for how the country might be transformed: free elections, a constitutional assembly, decentralisation and a European orientation. Days before his murder, he predicted the Putin regime would crumble, while acknowledging the resilience of autocracies.

Trained as a lawyer, Navalny first attracted attention as a transparency activist. He bought shares in notoriously corrupt oil and gas companies and asked awkward questions at shareholder meetings. The Kremlin controlled TV and most newspapers, so Navalny wrote up his exposés online. In 2011 he founded FBK, an anti-corruption organisation which grew into a grassroots national movement run by volunteers. He expresses pride at the way his campaigns encouraged young Russians to take part in opposition politics. Police detained him for the first time in 2011 when he attended protests against rigged Duma elections. Undaunted, he stood two years later to be mayor of Moscow, coming second, before finding himself in an “endless cycle” of rallies, arrests and spells in custody.

The Kremlin’s response to all this was vicious. His brother Oleg was jailed after a fake trial, a provocateur threw green gunk at Navalny, blinding him in one eye. In 2016 he tried to run for president. His videos – of Putin’s tacky Sochi palace and former president Dmitry Medvedev’s dodgy schemes – attracted millions of views. Navalny writes movingly about his wife, Yulia, – whom he met on holiday in Turkey – as a soulmate throughout this period.

Given his understanding of Putin’s Stalinist methods, why did he return to Moscow? His answer is that the struggle to make Russia a normal state was “my life’s work”. He wasn’t prepared to dump his homeland or his convictions, he says. At first, jail conditions were bearable. Well-wishers sent sacks of letters and a tiramisu cake. In one dispatch, Navalny ponders the “amazing ability of human beings to adapt and derive pleasure from the most trivial things”, such as instant coffee.

Behind bars, he chatted to his cellmates and read. He preferred Maupassant to Flaubert and enjoyed Oliver Twist (though he wonders if Dickens got working-class dialogue right). The FSB spied on him 24/7; his warders wore body cameras and barked commands.

As conditions worsened, he made fewer diary entries. More criminal “convictions” piled up – for insulting a war veteran and for extremism. He was shuffled from one penitentiary to the next. Meanwhile, “perverted” prison staff refused to treat his back pain, prompting a hunger strike. He was categorised as a flight risk and woken throughout the night, put in a tiny punishment cell and denied his wife’s letters.

None of these privations stopped Navalny from denouncing Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine as an “unjust war of aggression”. The reason for the war is Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and an obsession with his “historical legacy”, he writes. Critics regard Navalny as a closet nationalist. But Patriot calls for Russia to withdraw its troops, respect Ukraine’s 1991 borders and pay compensation.

During one of Yulia’s visits, Navalny told her there was a “high probability” he would never get out of prison alive. “They will poison me,” he said. “I know,” she replied. He sketches out what this means – no chance to say goodbye, never meeting his grandchildren, “tasseled mortar boards tossed in the air in my absence”. Maybe an unmarked grave. His philosophy: hope for the best, expect the worst. His death is a terrible loss, for Russia and for all of us.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[russianprotesters]

Ok so - I know Patriot , Navalny's memoir, isn't available in russia, but is there a way to get it to people? I know sales are important but it's more important to get Navalny's words to russia.

Would it be possible to email the entries for each day, like Dracula Daily, to subscribers? Or some other similar method to get it to people? --

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

While the attention of the world will be paid to the outstanding figure of Alexey Navalny and his decades of political struggle against Vladimir Putin, the fate of the Belarusian political prisoners must also be on the global political agenda in order to save lives that can still be saved. 

Mariya Sadousakaya-Komlach, noting correctly that Belarusian political prisoners are facing the same torture that Navalny was subjected to up to and including today.

[vengefulmercy]

I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler. […] It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about?”

— Alekei Navalny, writing from prison

[garudabluffs]

Posthumous memoir by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be published Oct. 22

Apr 11, 2024 "A memoir Alexei Navalny began working on in 2020 will be published this fall. “Patriot,” which publisher Alfred A. Knopf is calling the late Russian opposition leader’s “final letter to the world,” will come out Oct. 22."

READ MORE https://www.wwlp.com/news/entertainment/ap-entertainment/ap-posthumous-memoir-by-russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-to-be-published-oct-22/

Before He Died in Prison, Aleksei Navalny Wrote a Memoir. It’s Coming This Fall.

In the book, Navalny tells his story in his own words, chronicling his life, his rise as an opposition leader, and the attempts on his life.

"Navalny, who rose to global prominence as a fierce critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, resisted the Kremlin’s repeated attempts to silence him through physical harm, arrests and imprisonment in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he died in February, at age 47."

"Navalny maintained a presence on social media even behind bars, and remained a ferocious critic of Putin. His team, which was living and working in exile, continued to release exposés on corruption in Russia. He also kept working on the book, which includes never-before-seen correspondence from prison, according to the publisher."

+ "Even after his death, those who seek to carry on Navalny’s work and extend his legacy face threats and attacks. Last month, Leonid Volkov, who served as one of Navalny’s top organizers, was attacked with a hammer and tear gas outside his home in Lithuania’s capital.

Navalny was well aware that his activism put him at risk, but remained cheerfully defiant, with a wry, prankster-like persona that helped drive some of his viral online activism.

“I’m trying not to think about it a lot,” he said in an interview with CBS News in 2017. “If you start to think about what kind of risks I have, you cannot do anything.”

READ MORE https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/books/booksupdate/aleksei-navalny-memoir.html

Comments 273

April 11

"Most people have never heard the name, Galina Vishnevskaya. She was THE opera prima donna of the Bolshoi theater. And the wife of the famed cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. They both tried to protect the Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who alerted the world to Soviet oppression. For their efforts, they were kicked out of the Soviet Union. But not before they lost their jobs, and were erased from Soviet history. Vishnevskaya wrote her memoirs, far from the usual celebrity tell-alls about fame, money, and drugs. She goes into detail about Russian culture, including their collaboration with the famed composer, Shostakovich, and even Prokofiev. And her dealings with Stalin. Far more than a diva rehash, she describes her life through the sweep of history. The highest recommendation. And I look forward to reading Navalny, although I know it will be partly gruesome. Heroes are very rare. Autocrats are very common."

In 1984, Vishnevskaya published a memoir, Galina: A Russian Story (ISBN 0-15-134250-4)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bagley * * * *

“You are not allowed to give up.”

February 17, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Vladimir Putin killed his chief political opponent on Friday. Alexei Navalny, a Russian hero and patriot, is the latest in a long line of victims of Putin’s murderous regime. Navalny was in prison north of the Artic circle when he allegedly “died suddenly” on a “walk.” Most of Putin’s victims “fall out” of second-floor windows or die from exotic poisons or nerve agents. President Biden said,

Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world.

Of Navalny, Biden said,

He was brave. He was principled. He was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and where it applied to everybody.

Putin kills with impunity. Coincidentally, Donald Trump is currently urging the Supreme Court to grant him (and all other US presidents) the power to kill their political opponents with impunity. Even more coincidentally, Trump has not condemned Putin’s assassination of Navalny—leaving Trump alone among US and Western democratic leaders, all of whom condemned Putin for the death of Navalny.

The assassination of Navalny comes as the GOP is under the thrall of Putin. Trump and congressional Republicans are doing Putin’s work by refusing to provide supplemental funding for Ukraine. MAGA poster boy Tucker Carlson provided a platform last week for Putin to spread his lies about Russia’s history and territorial claims—including his claim that Ukraine is “not really a separate country.” Even Putin was derisive of Tucker Carlson’s pathetic interview. See Business Insider, Putin Says He Thought Tucker Carlson Would Ask Tougher Questions.

President Biden also condemned Congress for its inaction on Ukraine in his remarks on the assassination of Navalny. After his formal remarks, a reporter asked President Biden if there was anything the US could do to accelerate the delivery of aid to Ukraine. Biden responded,

No, but it’s about time [Congress] step[s] up, don’t you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation.” Two weeks, they’re walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all of the concern and almost – I won’t say panic – but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous.

The heroism of Navalny highlights the cowardice of House Republicans. Mike Johnson is damaging US foreign policy so he does not provoke the ire of Marjorie Taylor Greene. See op-ed by Eric Garcia in The Independent, Navalny’s death has shown Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson up as a coward.

Garcia explains that Mike Johnson did not spend the last two work days on the Senate bill granting aid to Ukraine but instead wasted time on the Mayorkas impeachment:

Johnson did [so] in the service of appeasing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump ally from Georgia, who is also an ardent opponent of funding for Ukraine. The fact [Johnson] refused to cross the person largely responsible for him being Speaker shows how unserious he is. Marjorie Taylor Greene has pledged that if aid to Ukraine goes to the floor of the House, she will file a motion to vacate the chair of Johnson. This comes despite the fact that many in Johnson’s conference want to support Ukraine and most Democrats would vote to help pass a bill doing so.

In other words, Mike Johnson is willing to allow Ukraine to fall to Putin because he wants to remain in his job as Speaker of the House—under the thumb of Marjorie Taylor Greene. What a pathetic, cowardly existence.

Against Mike Johnson’s cowardice (emblematic of all congressional Republicans) is the heroism of Alexei Navalny. In anticipation of his own assassination, Navalny left these words to those who remained behind:

If they decided to kill me, then it means we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed . . . . We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing, so don’t be inactive. You’re not allowed to give up.

We do not need to make Alexei Navalny’s ultimate sacrifice to follow in his footsteps. We just need not to give up—even when the odds against us seem overwhelming. We can do that. We have been doing that.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[mariacallous]

A day after Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested for allegedly taking bribes, becoming the highest-ranking official to face felony charges in recent years, a Moscow court has sent him to pre-trial detention for two months.

According to investigators, Ivanov participated in a criminal conspiracy in which he accepted “especially large bribes” while overseeing Defense Ministry construction and repair projects. Sergey Borodin, a friend of Ivanov, has also been remanded in custody.

However, the independent news site iStories reported on Wednesday that the real reason for Ivanov’s arrest is suspected treason, citing two sources close to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). “The bribery [charges] are for the public. They don’t want to talk publicly about treason right now — it’s a big scandal. It’s the deputy defense minister, after all,” the outlet quoted one source as saying.

The second source said that Vladimir Putin “gave the order after being convinced that the case was specifically about treason” and that “nobody would have arrested [Ivanov] for corruption.”

Ivanov’s arrest was first reported on the evening of April 23. According to Russian state media, he will be held in Moscow's Lefortovo remand prison for the duration of the authorities’ preliminary investigation. The Telegram channel 112 said that investigators have begun searching a dacha owned by Ivanov in Dagestan, while the channel VChK-OGPU reported that three other people have been arrested in connection with the case. 

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday evening that Vladimir Putin has been notified of Ivanov’s arrest and that Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was “informed in advance.” Ivanov is known to be a longtime ally of Shoigu, having served as his deputy governor in the Moscow region back in 2012.

Ivanov has overseen a wide range of construction projects as deputy defense minister, including the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, Moscow’s Patriot Park theme park, and the reconstruction of occupied Mariupol. In 2019, he was included on Forbes Russia’s list of the country’s richest security officials.

Following Ivanov’s arrest, a source told Forbes that Ivanov is “Shoigu’s man” but that he’d “had some slip-ups” and that “questions had piled up” around him. The source speculated that his arrest could be part of a “purge” of Shoigu’s inner circle in preparation for the minister’s possible departure from the defense ministry.

Ivanov has been the subject of a number of corruption investigations by journalists. In 2022, Team Navalny reported that the deputy minister’s family owns multiple expensive properties in the Moscow region. Later that year, they reported that Ivanov’s first wife had spent hundreds of thousands of euros on jewelry, clothing, and vacations over the years, with third-party individuals and companies regularly footing the bill. Ivanov has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the E.U.

[biryukzlodei-artblog]

"A Russian woman left Russia after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine and started dating a Ukrainian woman, but then fell in love with a Wagner PMC fighter. She dumped her Ukrainian girlfriend for him.

She told journalists about this story and now hundreds of liberal asses are burning on twitter and youtube.

Feminists don’t understand how a lesbian who run away "from the war" could fall in love with a Wagner PMC fighter."

"Question for him: what was scarier, fucking a liberal woman or storming Bakhmut? Her face is pretty meh, typical for the all soycucks."

"I read the comments under that video, hilarious, so many offended libshits there. They are already choosing psychotherapists for the poor little hohol girl. Oh well, our elephants will come now and restore order." (On TG patriotic Russians are called "our elephant", local meme)

"So they are curable after all. Good news." "You can cure anything with a dick :)"

"It's hard to believe. There’s a whole story with a hint of liberal wet dreams and fanfiction. The main character is the lesbian-Navalny fan, with a burr speech and hysterics, plus her boring correspondence between her and "Wagner guy" in the "I can fix him" style, pfff"

Well he fixed her with his dick at the end. I liked this fanfic.

[enchantedephiphany]

Already laughed out loud several times reading Navalny’s memoir, Patriot, by the 2nd chapter

And like Alexei, mourning the Japanese neurosurgeon who never existed.

[asgoodeasgold]

📣📣 Matthew Goode has a new audiobook coming out on 22 Oct - he narrates Alexei Navalny's memoir 'Patriot'‼️

It's available to pre-order from various platforms - more information on Penguin's website ➡️

He is only mentioned as narrator on Amazon Audible US but I assume this info is correct!

I am so excited about this, an important, worthy book. Penguin describes it as "a brave, passionate and intimate read" and I know Matthew will do it justice.

📷 My edit from Amazon US page and photograph of MG from Paramount+ UK premiere - license purchased by Alyssa Tang

[alaturkanews]

Russian opposition leader Navalny knew he would die in prison, says memoir

Excerpts from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s upcoming memoir published in New York magazine show that the dissident believed he would die in prison. The passages were published in anticipation of Navalny’s memoir, “Patriot”, which will be released on 22 October. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” Navalny reportedly wrote in March 2022, adding, “There will not…

[russianprotesters]

Alexei, it's nice spending time with you

While I'm reading the book, it's almost as if you are not gone....

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's channel reported on the presumed death of Russian politician Alexei Navalny. The video includes the last known footage of Navalny in court via video link (presumably to hide evidence of his ill-health). Even while under unimaginable isolation and torture, Navalny still could joke and mock the despicable terrorist regime that placed him behind bars without justification. Navalny didn't have to come back to Russia. He chose to return and face mortal danger because he was a patriot who refused to accept Putin's terrorist threats and the destruction of Russia by the forces of corruption and tyranny. For this bravery, he has been murdered. The world must stand up and make Putin pay for this and all the other Russians murdered for opposing his regime.

[storizenmagazine]

#BookReview: In "Patriot", Navalny envisions a future Russia defined by free elections, an independent judiciary, and an end to war.