Alexei Navalny’s prison diaries show 10 days of soul-searching with zero regrets

Alexei Navalny was a Russian anti-corruption campaigner, activist and opposition leader whose many international honours included the Sakharov Prize, the European parliament’s annual human-rights prize. The following is excerpted from his memoir, Patriot, and details his time in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison, representing the start of the diary he kept until his death on Feb. 16, 2024.

Jan. 21, 2021

I’ve decided I will, after all, keep a diary. First, because [my younger brother] Oleg has given me some notebooks. Second, because it would be a shame to let such a fine, magical date as 21.01.21 go to waste. And third, because if I don’t, some amusing goings-on will be forgotten.

Jan. 22

Every morning I have my blood pressure taken, and it is always as sound as that of a cosmonaut, 120/70. At home it was always a bit higher. Either staying here is having a therapeutic effect, or they always record everyone as having 120/70. The former seems more likely.

At morning inspection the guards remember to hope you “have a nice day.” At the evening inspection they wish you good night. It is slightly surreal when big, hulking guys in camouflage uniforms are so polite, but they seem entirely sincere.

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I was taken out for the first time for “exercise.” They take us to the seventh floor. There are several cells up there that constitute the “exercise yard.” You can take 27 (small, unhurried) steps around the perimeter. That’s my exercise.

The four-meter-high walls are painted green, with grimy streaks. Instead of a roof there is a steel grille supported on metal beams. Above that is fine-mesh chicken wire to prevent anything from being thrown from one yard to another.

A little above that there is boarding for a guard to walk on and make sure the prisoners are swarming correctly and not violating any regulations. It reminds me of an ant farm [my son] Zakhar wanted to buy. Only it is not a human being observing the ants but a specialized ant wearing a camouflage uniform, a fur hat, and felt boots.

Higher still, there is a sloping metal roof, which means that between the outer wall of the yard and the roof there is a gap of about one and a half meters, so you are exercising under a roof, but on one side can see a strip of sky. I say sky, but actually it is coils of barbed wire, then webbing, then chicken wire, then sky.

You are seeing, quite literally, a “checkered sky,” which was a euphemism for prison in my childhood. A checkered sky, a stripy suit ... I don’t have the stripy suit, yet.

But I do have a black prison overcoat, which they gave me because it’s cold outside and I don’t have “seasonally appropriate clothing.”

I walk in 27-step circles. If you walk too fast, you get dizzy.

The radio is blaring. Not just playing, but blaring. Down there on my third floor, I can usually hear music from the seventh-floor “exercise” yards through a closed window.

Suddenly I seem to hear a voice breaking through the music. I listen, and there it is again. “Alexei!” Is this for me? But nobody knows I’m exercising and nobody can see me. I yell back nevertheless, “What?” In reply, someone yells again, but it’s impossible to make out over the music. The specialized ant, I can see, is not happy. He says something into his walkie-talkie. I yell back, “What? I can’t hear you!”

The guy, apparently taking even more air into his lungs and paying no attention to the specialized ant, outblares the radio: “Alexei, hold out. All Russia is with you!”

I yell back, “Thank you!” and walk on, very moved. An unexpected and inspiring moment. I’m also trying to work out how on earth he knew I was there.

Jan. 23

There are to be protest demonstrations all over Russia today. I tried to discover what was happening by channel-hopping but found only a constantly repeated news report that “Navalny’s headquarters” were involving underage children in the protests. That featured two burly women with general’s epaulets, one from the Ministry of the Interior and the other from the Investigative Committee.

“They are involving children. They have received instructions from abroad. The emphasis is on spreading false information in opposition and foreign mass media. These are criminal offenses.”

There is not a word about what kind of information it is, or what the protest is about.

Jan. 24

I finally heard someone cursing and swearing in the corridor. I was beginning to doubt this could be a real prison.

Jan. 25

I spent a long time answering the letters. I discovered that (1) they were amazingly interesting; (2) I absolutely had to, and wanted to, reply to every one; (3) these were truly the answers to the questions like, Why am I doing this?

Every second letter brought tears to my eyes, just reading them. People are so good.

I replied to all of them. It took me a day, even though 85 percent were little more than “Alina, thank you!”

Jan. 27

The fluorescent light is now flashing brightly at random intervals. My perfectly decent cell has been instantly turned into a torture chamber. It’s impossible to read, or even just sit looking at the wall. You see the flashing even if you close your eyes. There is no escape. Damn! It is just nonsense, but enough to drive you crazy.

Apparently someone has written, “Search all the Navalnys’ premises,” but the system works brainlessly and literally. I have had my cell searched.

There comes a time when you realize a prison is still a prison, even if it is kept nice and clean.

“Take all your belongings out of the cell, including the mattress.”

“What do you mean, ‘all’?”

“Everything without exception.”

“But then I’ll have to hang everything up again and put everything back in place.”

“Take out all your belongings and proceed to the search room.”

In short, I have to take all my bits and pieces, which I had lovingly arranged on the shelves of a small metal cabinet, and chuck them into a huge sack. All belongings into the bag! Mattress and bed linen alongside it. Then drag it all to the search room. There everything is pointlessly but scrupulously shaken out and checked with a metal detector. Then strip naked. Everything you are wearing gets checked too.

Then you go back to the cell, where four people conduct a super search, peering into every nook and cranny.

Then you drag everything back in, cursing everyone, put everything back in place or hang it up.

At least while I was in the search room, they fixed the light.

I had a letter from a girl in Murmansk, supporting and thanking me.

She has cerebral palsy and spends her life saving money from her disability allowance to go to Europe for a week every few years. She misses the sun. Murmansk gets less than a month of sunny days in a year.

You read something like that and lose even the slightest inclination to feel sorry for yourself.

The lights have been switched off.

I’ll go to sleep. Hope [my wife] Yulia is okay. I miss her.

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Jan. 28

Yulia writes really entertaining letters. I asked her how the children were getting on, and yesterday she replied, “The children are fine, only Zakhar is a bit jumpy, because everyone keeps wanting to support and talk to him and he doesn’t like that.”

He takes after me.

Feb. 1

I was foolish enough to send three of the five T-shirts I have to the laundry. I thought they would come back in three days, but ten days have now passed and there’s no sign of them. I am having to wash the two remaining shirts on alternate nights.

The intercom instructed me, “Get yourself ready to go to the shower,” but I didn’t have a single clean T-shirt. I had to take a sleeveless undershirt. Via the internet, Yulia had ordered two from the prison shop for me, one gray and one black, on my first day here. Just in case.

It is the most basic “made in Russia” cotton undershirt.

They are probably sewn by prisoners. In lots of prison photographs people are wearing just such an undershirt. When I pulled it on after the shower, it was somehow crooked and seemed tight under the arms. For the first time I really felt like a prisoner.

Today has been a very good day, though. I talked to Yulia, took a shower, and had my first delivery of food I had ordered from the shop. I had been waiting for more than a week. Before this, they just brought household goods from what I ordered. But I now have an omelet (which I’ll eat for breakfast tomorrow), radishes, normal bread, boiled eggs, and so on. All these riches were delivered through the food hatch, and I caught myself thinking, Damn, if they release me tomorrow this will all be wasted.

Tomorrow is a court hearing to potentially convert a suspended sentence into a custodial one.

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Feb. 2

5:50 a.m. Radio on. 6:00 a.m. Lights on. I get up and immediately the intercom in the wall instructs me, “Put on seasonally appropriate clothing. Get yourself ready, have your documents on you.” Wow, that means they’re taking me to the courtroom rather than using a conference call. But why so early? The hearing isn’t until 10:00.

They came for me fairly quickly (15 minutes) and took me to the police truck. There were special forces troops in helmets, armed with semiautomatics. We arrived at Moscow City court, for some reason. It was supposed to be Simonovsky court. I had to strip again, but this time only to the waist. I kept my trousers on but took off my socks and boots. Now I’m sitting in another pencil case. This time it is 3.2 meters square. I wait.

I sat in one cell, then was taken to another. I sat there for a while before they took me to the courtroom. The trial was dull. A large beautiful hall. The trial has been moved here from Simonovsky because there were so many applications from the press. Even so, not many people have been allowed in. Yulia is in the front row.

We exchange a wink.

The second part of the hearing was livelier. I spoke and then it was over. The judge retired to consider her decision, which would come as no surprise to us.

That’s it. Now it’s official:

I am a convict. Three and a half years in a standard conditions prison.

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Feb. 3

Getting sentenced seems to have a calming effect on me. I slept like a baby. Actually, I do sleep well here, although the bed is uncomfortable and my back hurts when I turn. Tonight, though, was the best night so far. At 5:55, five minutes before I needed to, I woke up feeling completely rested.

Exactly the same thing happened in 2013 in Kirov. Sentence pronounced, five years, back to the prison, and I immediately fell asleep and slept soundly. Most likely, it’s because the uncertainty is over.

I’ve had the same frank conversation with myself a hundred times: Do I have any regrets, do I worry?

Absolutely not. The belief that I am in the right, and the sense of being part of a great cause, outweighs all the worries by a million per cent. And then, this was all entirely predictable. I thought it over many times and recognized that the increasing effectiveness of our team would lead to Putin’s giving the order to imprison me. He would have no other way to resolve his problem. Or rather, he would, but it wouldn’t work.

Copyright © 2024 by Yulia Navalnaya and the Estate of Alexei Navalny