Patriot

“No matter how fascinating and gripping the details of the failed attempt to murder me were, I was far more interested in how the elections in Tomsk and Novosibirsk had gone.”

After being poisoned, Navalny’s recovery helped to establish his credentials. The results of local elections were more important to him than his own health; the chance to politically rebuke his enemies took precedence over everything else. Early in the book, Navalny signals to his audience how invested he is in political change and The Enduring Hope for Democratic Reform in Russia.

“My mother pointed out, however, that even the fools in our town knew the real reason for the monitoring.”

Navalny remembers how, in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the adults in his life were aware of the truth about what had happened but were forced to accept the official narrative of events. Such memories indicate the extent to which the society had become entrapped by The Normalization of Corruption, in which an entire society was trapped in a system that everyone knew was failing but imagining an alternative was almost impossible.

“Tolstoy, with manic obsessiveness, denies the role of the individual in history.”

Navalny echoes Tolstoy’s sentiments from War and Peace that great men do not change history alone. Ironically, this confounds the narrative setup of the book, which pits Navalny against Vladimir Putin. Navalny distinguishes himself from Putin, however, by constantly elevating and crediting his team. He is not alone but is working in the mold of Tolstoy’s vision, riding the crest of social change rather than driving it.

“The ballet Swan Lake was on. This was a sign any Soviet person would unerringly recognize as meaning something serious had occurred.”

Life under a censored regime, Navalny remembers, means attempting to perceive meaning in events that are designed to be meaningless. The airing of a ballet, for example, seems like a deliberate attempt to convince the public that everything is normal, yet the attempt itself belies the reality. The reading of such signs illustrates the complexity and cognitive dissonance required to live in such a society.

“The likes of Putin are nostalgic for the U.S.S.R. because they were inaccessibly superior to everybody else.”

The corrupt nostalgia for the Soviet era is, Navalny suggests, deeply ironic. Such people are remembering a time when they were “inaccessibly superior to everybody else” (84), an apparent rebuke of the founding principles of the Soviet state that promised equality for all. The Soviet era thus masked an innate inequality, while the modern state does not even bother with the mask.

“For as long as Putin’s group is in power, we will count the missed opportunities and be noticing how other countries have overtaken us in per capita GDP, and how those we have always looked down on as little better than beggars have overtaken us in terms of their national average income.”

When speaking about other countries, Navalny occupies a difficult position. He is inherently chauvinistic with regard to his beloved Russia. Considering himself a patriot, he believes deeply in his country’s squandered potential. However, his comments also involve a hint of xenophobia, as he sees the countries that he (and, he suggests, other Russians) looks down on as “little better than beggars” (115). This patronizing attitude is a consequence of the same patriotism that drives Navalny to fight for a better Russia.

“The chanting outside the window grows louder, while the judge continues to insist that nobody wishes to attend the trial.”

Navalny paints the absurdism of the Russian legal system to demonstrate the scale of his fight and the normalization of corruption. The judges in the court explicitly deny reality in such a way that their attempts are almost laughable. Navalny cannot help but laugh at the absurd system that dominates his entire existence.

“In fact, of the two of us, she holds even more radical views.”

Yulia is a constant reassuring presence in Navalny’s life. He is persecuted by the state for his views, yet he takes comfort in knowing that his wife has “even more radical views” than he does (173). He is considered the danger, however, so he is thrown into prison, while Yulia is not. As such, Navalny shows that it is not the radical nature of a point of view but having the audacity to express it that will rile the Russian government.

“From a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I gradually became a religious person.”

Faith plays an important role in Navalny’s political persecution. Small gestures of faith give him strength at times when he is being tortured. His spiritualism is littered infrequently throughout the book, almost always in reference to the more atheistic person Navalny once was. His faith gives him strength, but he believes that his battle is—and always has been—fundamentally secular.

“Some people pretended to be in the opposition, and others pretended to attack them. It was unspeakably boring to watch.”

Politics in Russia, as described by Navalny, is an elaborate farce. The theatrical nature of the political system often amounts to a play, in which the performers act so as to please their superiors rather than adhere to any abstract idea of morality or justice. Entire debates are staged between two performers to give the outward appearance of a functioning political system, even though it is entirely orchestrated to be purposefully absurd by those in power.

“It quickly became obvious that in a corrupt environment you yourself are forced to behave corruptly, even if all you want is to help people.”

The normalization of corruption in Russia, Navalny suggests, is so widespread that he is in danger of becoming corrupted through frustration and proximity. While trying to enact actual political reform, Navalny discovered that he had to become a little corrupt in order to eradicate greater corruption. Even if he wants to help, there is no way not to become contaminated by corruption because it is so widespread.

“Public rallies had not been a popular form of protest in recent years, as I had discovered only too painfully while trying to organize them with Yashin for Yabloko.”

How to stage political rallies had been forgotten, just as the public had forgotten how to attend them. As such, the process of mounting an opposition to the Russian government was like relearning the language of dissent. Navalny and the public were relearning this in tandem after years of suppression and censorship as they once more took up the battle against authoritarianism.

“The investigators did not even make a pretense that this was a proper financial investigation.”

The more Navalny railed against the corruption of the government, the less invested the government became in maintaining the pretense of justice. The performative nature of justice was entirely abandoned, and the ugly corruption was revealed in totality. The corruption and authoritarianism were so fragile that even Navalny’s small criticisms caused the veil to fall away.

“Every time I pushed the button to publish another investigation, I realized that I was striking Oleg with my own hand.”

There was a consequence of Navalny’s work that extended beyond his physical well-being. Navalny was willing to sacrifice himself, but publishing a blog could physically harm his brother. This was a painful reminder to Navalny of the stakes of his campaign. He was happy to make sacrifices for himself, but he had the responsibility to balance his political activism with his love for his family.

“Then I was faced with another torture: Instagram.”

Throughout Patriot, Navalny describes the very real torture that he endured at the hands of the Russian state. As well as nearly killing him with poison, he was subjected to stays in solitary confinement that were designed to break his spirit. Nevertheless, he faces this with humor, suggesting that he finds navigating social media like Instagram to be equally torturous. The humor presents him as a sympathetic narrator while undermining the authoritarian state’s attempts to brutalize him into silence.

“Medvedev was absolutely obsessed with sneakers.”

Navalny recognizes that most people in Russia know that their government is corrupt. He wages his campaign against this corruption by revealing the stark absurdity of this corruption. As well as the massive scale of the corruption, he shows the way in which Putin’s allies spend their ill-gotten gains on something as inconsequential as sneakers. Medvedev’s sneaker obsession comes at the expense of regular Russians: Their suffering pays for his sneakers, which Navalny uses to portray the corruption as inexcusable and unsustainable.

“Let’s become a normal country at last. That would be beautiful.”

Navalny believes that the Russian state, in all its authoritarianism, is something that has been made and can also be unmade. He craves normalcy from his state, assuring his audience that their current suffering is not unchangeable. His political message is one of hope, in which he encourages a patriotic audience to imagine how great Russia could be and embrace the enduring hope for democratic reform.

“On February 16, 2024, Alexei Navalny was killed in that prison.”

Part 4 of Patriot begins with a stark admission. The diary entries that follow are published posthumously, allowing the audience to understand that the terrible conditions to which Navalny is subjected to are—at all times—contributing to his death. The humor becomes darker, and the optimism becomes more refined. The decision to place this statement at the beginning of Part 4 colors the remainder of the memoir with the knowledge of Navalny’s death.

“They fake his statement and then weep over it.”

As he is passed through the courts, Navalny gets to witness the fakeness of the justice system firsthand. A false statement is written, he claims, and then people cry when it is read aloud. Everything is fake in this imagined reality, from the offense, to the letter, to the emotion. This is the system that condemns him and that, through his book, he condemns.

“In prison you are constantly waiting.”

For someone as driven as Navalny, the wasted time in prison is one of the worst aspects. He is made to wait for everything, time that could be spent—even in prison—on other projects. Navalny’s capacity to change the world is deliberately taken away from him, denuding him of his purpose and determination in the battle against authoritarianism.

“That resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties, a traumatizing of nations, with consequences neither we nor Afghanistan can put behind us, and the emergence of one of the main reasons for the collapse of the U.S.S.R.”

Throughout the book, Navalny draws comparisons between Putin’s Russia and the late stages of the Soviet Union. Through the comparison, he urges the Russian public to view the current regime as on the brink of collapse. This comparison is made most explicit in the comparison of the wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine; he hopes that the latter will lead to the fall of the current government, just as the former led to the fall of the Soviet Union. These historical precedents are a way to reinvigorate the Russian public’s desire to change their government.

“We’ve hit rock bottom.”

This late in the book, Navalny compares his own situation to the situation in Russia. Trapped in prison, he and his country have both “hit rock bottom” (454). However, contained within this frank assessment is the hope and possibility of democratic reform: If he and his country are already at rock bottom, then the only way to go is up.

“By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters.”

Navalny distinguishes himself from Putin by referring to his obligation to his voters. He put his life on the line because he felt an obligation to his supporters, while Putin—as he is presented in the book—lives separate from the people in his palace, enriching himself and his cronies at the expense of the people.