Алексей Навальный

The main torment of imprisonment is, of course, the inability to see the faces of your family, to talk to your loved ones. I haven’t had any visits for 8 months and yesterday I was told that I’d be transferred to a cell-type facility for the maximum possible term of 6 months.

No visits are allowed there. This means more than a year without a visit. Even maniacs and serial killers serving life sentences have the right to receive a visit, but I do not. Well, hardships make one tougher, although I don’t understand why this should apply to my children too.

But most importantly, when something like this happens to you, you realize how important it is to fight this unscrupulous regime, how important it is to do just about anything in order to throw the yoke of these scoundrels off Russia and dispel the illusion that they have planted in the heads of millions.

Let us try to remain strong and do all we can every day.

I’m reading a book by Anatoly Marchenko, a Soviet dissident who spent half his life in prison and died in 1986 after a hunger strike. He describes his time behind bars in the ’60s.

Every page strikes me not even by how similar the systems are, but by the fact that it is actually one and the same system.

For example, here’s a quote from a chapter about the SHIZO: 
“Terms there are limited — no more than 15 days. But this rule is easy for the administration to circumvent. They let you out in the evening, and then the next day you have to go back in for another 15 days. What for? There is always a reason: blocking the peephole while standing in the cell, picking up a cigarette butt while walking, rude replies to the warden. They will give you 15 more days for nothing. [...] Once in Karaganda they kept me in the SHIZO for 48 days and would only let me out only to read another resolution on “placement in the punishment cell”. Writer Yuri Daniel was given two consecutive punishments in Dubravlag for being “rude to a guard”.

Compare that to my four months in the SHIZO — the pattern is the same. It’s the same with everything. Hunger, food, cigarettes, visits, parcels and kiosks — that’s what a convict’s world revolves around. The only significant change is that now there is plumbing in the cells, and the “reduced food ration” — an official hunger torture — has been abolished. Well, and there’s now more corruption. 

Some may say: “They have also abolished the punishment of deprivation of parcels and visits.” But I mean, look at me. I’ve been in Melekhovo for seven months, and during that time I’ve had 1 (one) call, 1 (one) parcel, and 0 (zero) visits. 

Yes, the Soviet prison system had undergone some humanization after the death of Stalin, under whom there were actual death camps, but after that it has remained unchanged, having nothing to do with the re-education of criminals. Its only aim is to dehumanize the prisoner, bully him and serve the illegal instructions of the country’s political leadership. They’ll let the right people out, they’ll easily find a reason to increase anyone’s sentence, and they’ll kill anyone they’re asked to and report the cause of death as pneumonia.

So the Russian prison system is the same as the Soviet Gulag, except that there’s now a church in every prison. This system cannot be reformed in any way, and must be completely rebuilt in the Beautiful Russia of the Future.

Keeping my promise.

During the shooting of the “Navalny” film (which had no title at the time), Yulia and Odessa, the producer of the film, came up to me during a break. They were both wearing these silly space jackets, so I asked for a picture of us. We discussed the fact that the picture was really funny, but we weren’t allowed to post it on Instagram, because we were trying to keep the whole thing a secret. 

So I made a joke: “I’ll post it when your film is nominated for an Academy Award”.

On January 24th, the documentary film “Navalny” was nominated for an Academy Award.

I haven’t seen the film, as you know, but whereas before I could only write a letter to the film’s director Daniel Roher and all the crew members saying that they were super cool and terribly talented because I really think so, now it has become an acknowledged fact.

I think back to the day when I met this weird couple — the Canadian director, who had his camera wrapped in duct tape, and his redheaded producer, who knew Japanese — and I think about how great it was that I agreed to do this film quite unexpectedly for myself.

Their eyes were burning and I thought that it would be nice to work with people with burning eyes.

This film is a tremendous effort by a great team of wonderful people. I heartily congratulate them on receiving a high and much-deserved appreciation for their work.

I already quoted this great phrase in my last words, but Luna Lovegood’s words from a Harry Potter book matter so much to the world we live in that I’ll gladly quote it again: “It is very important not to feel lonely. If I were Voldemort, I would really want you to feel lonely.”

I learned about the campaign in my support and events in cities all over the world from my lawyers. I regard it, of course, as a campaign for the release of all political prisoners in Russia and Belarus, where my name stands as one of the symbols.

The Voldemorts of our world, Putin, Lukashenko, Khamenei and Maduro, want us, those who refuse to submit to their power, to feel alone, abandoned, miserable and forgotten before their machines of lies, corruption and dehumanization.

And this really is terribly important — when you find yourself in prison, you realize especially keenly that you must not feel lonely. Feeling lonely today means being broken tomorrow.

I salute, thank and hug everyone who gives me and others like me the opportunity to feel that I am not alone every second of my prison life, no matter how hard it is.

It has been exactly two years since I returned to Russia. I have spent these two years in prison. When you write a post like this, you have to ask yourself: How many more of such anniversary posts will you have to write? 
Life and the events around us prompt the answer: however many it may take. Our miserable, exhausted Motherland needs to be saved. It has been pillaged, wounded, dragged into an aggressive war, and turned into a prison run by the most unscrupulous and deceitful scoundrels. Any opposition to this gang - even if only symbolic in my current limited capacity - is important. 
I said it two years ago, and I will say it again: Russia is my country. I was born and raised here, my parents are here, and I made a family here - I found a loved one and had kids with her. I am a full-fledged citizen and I have the right to unite with like-minded people and be politically active. There are plenty of us, certainly more than corrupt judges, lying propagandists, and Kremlin crooks. 
I'm not going to surrender my country to them, and I believe that the darkness will eventually fade away. But as long as it persists, I will do all I can, try to do what is right, and urge everyone not to abandon hope.
Russia will be happy!

In my two years behind bars, my only truly original story is the one about the psycho. Everything else has been told and described numerous times.

If you open any book by a Soviet dissident, there will be endless stories of punishment cells, hunger strikes, violence, provocations, lack of medical care. In short, nothing new. But my story about the psycho is really new - at least I've never seen or heard anything like it. 

So, let me give you an idea of the place where I sit all the time. It is a narrow corridor with cells on either side. The metal doors offer little to no soundproofing, plus there are ventilation holes above the doors, so the two people sitting in the cells opposite can have a conversation without even raising their voices. This is the main reason why there has never been anyone in the cell opposite from mine, nor in my entire 8-cell section. I was the only one there, and I had never seen any other punished convicts the whole time (well, except for my cellmate, the tractor driver, of course).

And then about a month ago, they put a psycho in the cell across from mine. At first I thought he was faking it. Very active and cartoonish. If you tell a kid to act like a madman, that's about what he'll come up with. Screaming, growling, hitting, barking, arguing with himself in three different voices. But in the case of my psycho, 70% of the words are obscene. There are a lot of videos online of people who think that they've been possessed by demons. This is very similar - the growling wail (my favorite of his three personas) comes on periodically and doesn't turn off for hours. That's why I stopped to think he was a faker - no normal person can yell for 14 hours every day during the day and 3 hours at night for a month. And when I say "yell", I mean the kind of yelling that makes one's neck veins swell up. 

For the past month, I've been going nuts and starting every checkup by demanding to transfer this lunatic somewhere else. It's impossible to sleep at night or read during the day. They don't transfer him, and they deliberately emphasize: he is a convict just like you. 

And then I find out a wonderful detail: this nutcase was incarcerated (he got 24 years for killing someone) in another place, and a month ago they moved him here on purpose, and now they constantly keep him in a punishment cell, so that he, so to speak, keeps me entertained. 

I have to admit that this plan is working: I never get bored, not do I ever get a good night's sleep. Sickness is especially cool: during the day you suffer in a cell with a fever and dream of the night when they lower your bunk bed and give you a mattress, and at night you listen to the cheerful barking of your neighbor. As you know, sleep deprivation is one of the most effective tortures, but formally, I can't complain: he's an inmate like me, he was also put in a punishment cell, and it is up to the administration to decide who gets put in which cell. 

But as usual in such situations I am amazed at something else.
This was all planned, you know. Someone thought of this and implemented it at the regional or federal level - you can't just transfer a convict for no reason at all, there's a rule about serving your whole term in one colony. So there was an order from above: press him. And the generals and colonels at lower levels held a meeting: "So, how shall we press him?" And someone, wanting to distinguish himself, said: "We have a madman in this and that prison, he screams day and night. Let's take him to Navalny."
"Yes, yes. What a great idea, fellow officers. Comrade Colonel, proceed and report on the execution."
I won't be surprised if it turns out that they took a raving madman from a prison hospital, declared him sane, and now keep him in a cell across mine so that he can entertain me.

The moral of this story is simple: the Russian prison system, the Federal Penitentiary Service, is run by a real collection of not just scoundrels, but real sick perverts. Everything in their system always has a sick twist: the infamous mop rapes, sticking boilers up people's anuses, etc. It wouldn't occur to a bad but sane person to do such a thing. Everything you read about the horrors and fascist crimes of our prison system is all true. There's just one correction: the reality is even worse.

I did manage to earn my tenth term in the punishment cell in the last year after all. My prison goons actually bothered enough to convene their commission on the weekend of December 31 especially for me. 
"Convict Navalny, surveillance operator noticed that you washed your face at 5:24 in the morning, while according to the schedule you wake up at 5:00 and wash at 6:00. Given the severity of the offense (they really said so) you will be transferred to the punishment cell for a maximum term of 15 days." 
Thus my plans for a fancy New Year were ruined: I had saved a packet of potato chips and a can of saury for it. So I spent the New Year in the ShIZO with my old friends: a bum (who was sad) and a psycho (who was howling and shouting behind the door). 
New Year in the ShIZO is like any other day: getting up at 5 and going to bed at 21. So for the first time since I was six years old I just slept the whole New Year night. All in all I am pleased. People pay money to celebrate New Year in some unusual way, and I got that for free. 
I'm only a little worried about the depression of my neighbor, the bum. I should probably call him a tractor driver now, since I cleaned him up very well and he is a tractor driver by trade. He was released on January 3 and brought back to me on January 4. And whenever they let him out, they do not take him to the barracks like everyone else. Instead, they always declare him ill and put him in the medical ward, which was full of flu patients - there's an epidemic here. And exactly 24 hours later they threw him back into my cell. It seems like they use him as a bioweapon. No wonder he's sad. 
Stay healthy in the new year! 😉

Guess what this is.
The exact answer will be at the end of this post, but generally, you can see the state of human rights and justice in Russia in these pictures. See how the system works when you are not allowed to beat up a person, but your leadership ordered you to hurt them badly. 
For example, I have a problem with my spine. It is clear what one has to do to make the problem worse: keep me immobile as much as possible. That's easy to achieve. If you lock a person up in a punishment cell, where he can either stand or sit on an iron stool for 16 hours a day, after a month in such conditions even a healthy person will undoubtedly get back pains. I've spent the last three months like this. Naturally, my back hurts a lot. 
So, what can I do? I write a petition: call me a doctor. After a month and a half, and only after a threat of a lawsuit, the doctor comes - some woman in a mask. She takes five minutes to examine me and writes something in my medical record. When asked obvious questions like what her diagnosis is, what she prescribed me, and even what her last name is and where she works, the woman says: "Take him away". Taking me away is the only thing that is done here quickly and without any problems. 
After a while they start giving me some kind of injections. "What are you injecting?" - I ask. "We inject what the doctor prescribed. B vitamins, for example." Vitamins are great, but the injections don't help, and in general, I feel a little uncomfortable being injected with an unknown drug. 
I ask: "Write down on a piece of paper the name of the doctor, the diagnosis, and what they're giving me." I ask once, twice, twenty-two times. My lawyer writes a complaint. All to no avail.
I open the Internal Rules and see that I have a 100% guaranteed right to get a copy of my medical records. What good rules, I think, and write a request for a copy of my records. Exactly one month later, I get an answer: according to the law you have the full right to get your medical records, here they are, a 26-page attachment. 
You have probably already guessed by now that the screenshots above are what my medical records look like.
It's like they're saying, "We had to give you the chart, so here it is, enjoy reading it."
And they're all smiling, laughing and having a blast. They don't even hide the fact that I can write as many complaints as I want to the court and Moscow, but it was Moscow that came up with it all. The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, General Gostev, personally approved it, and in the courts there are the same people like them, but wearing mantles instead of uniforms. 
And you laughed at the fact that I'm getting winter boots through court. Well, what else can I do? Now I'm going to sue for the right to actually be able to read something in my own medical records. I'm looking forward to the moment when they will start bringing meals to my cell only after I file a court complaint. 
Well, that's okay. I'm a lawyer myself and I love trials. My lawyers are getting a little tired though 😉

A regular and joyful event in my life - getting out of the punishment cell - now looks quite mundane. They just take me out of the last cell of the long corridor and bring me to the first one, but on our way we enter the search room, where I change my clothes. After all, there must be order in everything: while I am in the punishment cell (ShIZO), there must be huge stenciled letters "ShIZO" on the back of my shirt, and if I am put in the "cell-type room" (PKT), then the letters "PKT" must be on the back of my shirt as well. 
Despite the distance of only 30 meters, there is a huge difference from a practical point of view. In the punishment cell nothing is allowed, and in the regular cell they give me food I can purchase at the prison store along with my meal. So while I'm at one end of the corridor I drink boiling water, and when I'm at the other end of it, I drink coffee, which improves my mood by 300 percent. 
I'm constantly weighed here, so I know that on average I lose 3.5 kilograms of weight for every 10 days in the punishment cell, which I slowly regain if they don't put me back right away. 
I read somewhere that when you fatten piglets, you cannot always feed them well - you will get a lot of fat and not enough meat. Competent breeders alternate: they feed the piglets for one month and then "marinate" them for the next month. That way you get excellent results: a layer of fat, a layer of meat, a layer of fat, a layer of meat. 
This makes me think: could it be that they want to eat me? I mean, the African dictator Bokassa was known to eat members of the opposition in order to gain their power. 
Putin's level of madness is on par with Bokassa's and his 24-year reign is quite respectable for any crazed dictator. So he may well adopt the best practices of his "colleagues". That would be very original and demonstrate to the whole world that we are following our own independent way of development and the West cannot tell us what to do 😉

It's amazing with how much delight and schadenfreude our propagandists (in my case, the radio in my cell) talk about the destruction of Ukraine's energy system. Basking in joy, they report how many cities have been left without power, how many people have no heat, how the Kyiv subway has stopped working again, and details like, "People heat up food with candles," which bring them to an ecstasy that is noticeable even in their voices. 
Certainly, I don't expect these creeps to have any basic sympathy for innocent civilians in a horrible situation. I am rather puzzled as to why they cannot look a little further than their own noses and take simple things into account. Firstly, these strikes on civilian infrastructure do not demonstrate the power and prowess of Russian weapons at all, but rather the helplessness of the Russian army. Having suffered several major defeats at the hands of the troops they allegedly destroyed a year ago, it is simply taking revenge on the civilian population. The population certainly suffers, but there is no military sense in these strikes. And this is clearly how Russian citizens perceive it. Look at the second slide: the poll shows that only 14% of Russian citizens still agree that the "special military operation" is going well. And the proportion of such answers is dropping with each passing month.
Secondly, and most importantly, we are pounding the Ukrainian energy system with missiles invented (and often made) back in the Soviet Union. And also Iranian drones, those flying mopeds, which nevertheless turned out to be more high-tech than anything the Russian army possesses after 23 years under the leadership of Supreme Commander-in-Chief Putin. And it is quite obvious that Ukraine, being a scientifically and industrially advanced state and formerly a key part of the Soviet military-industrial complex, can definitely create something no worse than an Iranian flying moped, and most likely even better. 
We have seen in practice how our air defenses work - they do not. If Ukraine was able to hit a strategic aviation airfield deep inside the country, and if we ourselves maniacally impose this type of war with strikes on power grids on them, we will soon see that, as they say, two can play at this game. And then the Ukrainians will knock out the lights and heat first in Kursk and Belgorod, then in Voronezh, and then in Moscow. Who will we then complain to about needing to heat food for our children with a candle flame? 
It is clear what the propagandists will say: in response to our peaceful humanitarian missile strikes, they employ terrorist and Russophobic missile strikes. But that won't sound convincing at all.

Alexei Navalny is a beacon of hope for democracy in Russia and around the world and the face of the opposition against Putin.

I am in awe of Navalny’s courage. His efforts to champion a more democratic vision for Russia are selfless and shocking. And insanely brave.

Many are afraid to speak their own mind. That’s why it’s so important to think about Alexei Navalny these days, who is still a courageous man and stands for principles that offer good prospects for many Russian citizens.

There are real heroes in this world and they are not on movie screens. Navalny is a moral superhero. A hero of conscience and courage. He’s survived assassination attempts and sits in prison right now because of his fight for truth and democracy, not just for Russia but for all who are sick of corruption, greed, and the violent abuse of power. He has a wife and children, but, like Mandela and Havel, he refuses to capitulate to bullies. Solidarity with this man should be a global commitment.

He is a stalwart fighter for a Russia free of the Putin stain. When Russia eventually emerges from the petty authoritarianism misruling the country, Mr. Navalny’s fellow citizens must remember his sacrifice.

With the eyes of the world now trained on Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his brutal invasion of Ukraine, Navalny’s message of resistance is finding new weight inside and outside of Russia, even as he remains behind bars.

He understood if he wanted to be the moral conscience of the nation, he had to lead by example. And show people that they should not be afraid. And that he wasn’t going to be afraid.

Navalny has been exposing Kremlin corruption since 2008. His campaign to dislodge Russia’s ruthless dictator has inspired unprecedented street protests; at their height these involved tens of thousands of people marching through Moscow chanting, “Putin is a thief”.

Even though he has been unable to challenge the president at the ballot box, his voice retains its power for many Russians and he remains a threat to the Kremlin.

Navalny now sits in one of Russia’s worst prisons, his life in the hands of a dictator who all evidence says already tried to kill him once for exposing the grotesque corruption of his regime. Navalny saw no alternative to risking everything to make a difference in his country. Even the all-powerful Vladimir Putin recognizes the power of a single man without fear.

For recognizing corruption as the biggest political problem of our times, and for risking limb and life to fight it, Navalny deserves the Nobel Peace Prize—or, at the very least, the full and unconflicted support of decent people.

Mr. Navalny knew what awaited him, because he knows as well as the dissidents of the Soviet era knew that the one thing a corrupt and authoritarian regime cannot abide is the truth. “I am not afraid. I know that I am in the right.