‘I hope I am the last to endure this’: Alexei Navalny’s devastating prison letters to Russian dissident Natan Sharansky who spent nine years locked up in same gulag isolation cells
Dear esteemed Aleksei,
I experienced a kind of shock when I received a letter from you. The very thought that it came straight from SHIZO, where you have already spent 128 days, excites in the way an old man would be excited if he received a letter from his ‘alma mater’, the university he attended for many years. spent his youth. .
I respond to you not only as an ‘author for reader’, but also as your admirer.
As “author for reader”:
When I was writing my book ‘Fear No Evil’ shortly after my release in February 1986, almost all my friends and comrades in arms were locked up in gulags or in battle. So I saw this book not only as a memoir, but also as a kind of textbook or manual on how to behave in a confrontation with the KGB. But by the time it was published in Russian, the USSR was already collapsing. That is why, over the years, the book was increasingly interpreted as a historical novel about the Dark Ages. And now – “the idiot’s dream has come true!”
First Volodya Kara-Murza7 and now you have written to me about how this book ‘works’ in a Russian prison today. My accident created this silver lining.
And now – as an admirer:
Aleksei, you are not just a dissident – you are a dissident ‘with a style’! My horror at your poisoning turned to surprise and elation when you began your own independent investigation.
I was very angry about the question asked by a certain European correspondent the day after your return to Russia. ‘Why did he return? We all knew he would be arrested at the airport. Doesn’t he understand such simple things? My response was quite rude: “You’re the one who doesn’t understand something. If you think his goal is survival, you’re right. But his real concern is the fate of his people – and he tells them, “I am not afraid and you need not be afraid either.” ”
I wish that – no matter how difficult it may be physically – you will maintain your inner freedom.
In prison I discovered that in addition to the law of universal gravity of particles, there is also a law of universal gravity of souls. By remaining in prison as a free person, you, Aleksei, are influencing the souls of millions of people around the world.
Aleksei, it’s really sad that the past can return so quickly and so easily. Volodya Bukovsky once emphasized, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that communism must be put on trial. But few supported this idea – after all, the free world won ‘without a bullet being fired’ – why return to the past?
I hope that now, after all these shots have been fired, it is clear why it was necessary then, and why it will still be necessary tomorrow.
XXX
By the way, I am writing to you the day before Passover – the celebration of the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery 3,500 years ago. That is the beginning of our freedom and our history as a people. On this evening, Jews from all over the world sit at the festive table and read the words: “Today we are slaves – tomorrow we are free people. Today we are here – next year in Jerusalem.”
On this day, I sit at the banquet wearing a yarmulke, which was made from my footcloth forty years ago by my cellmate, a Ukrainian prisoner in Chistopol prison. Everything is so twisted in this world! I wish you, Aleksei, and all Russia, an exodus as soon as possible.
Cuddly toys,
Nathan Sharansky