It’s time for another book review. ‘Patriot’ is a personal and political memoir written by the late Alexei Navalny, who died in mysterious circumstances while a prisoner of the Russian state in 2024. It is clear that the author sees himself as patriotic, but argues that true patriotism has a strictly moral - and self-denying - basis. Navalny believed in a Russia free of state-enabled crime where ordinary Russians were free to reach their own potential. He was a devoted family man, a husband and father, and we are left in no doubt about the effect his persecution had on his wife. He actively walked towards danger, arguing for a better Russia that would once again be worthy of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Sakharov, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff.
But Navalny never brands himself as a martyr - self pity never emerges onto the page. Only his love for his fellow Russians.
The latter part of the book is written while in detention, and must be approached with a degree of caution as we can only assume excerpts must have either been smuggled out, or were censored by the authorities. So parts may not be ‘true’ or ‘complete’ as they might have been had they been written by an outside observer. Much might be written in code, and so the reader might feel entitled to read between the lines.
But Navalny was often held in solitary confinement, his main contacts being his guards, many of whom emerge as human. Fellow prisoners were seldom seen. So there is a strange crossover with the situation of the solitary monk, whose accommodation too is typically described as a ‘cell’. The author presents this as an opportunity for reflection upon life’s real priorities, and here the book acquires its real value. What do you do when in isolation?
Navalny decides to observe Lent. This is different to his well-known hunger strike. It is a self-imposed discipline that might not otherwise be expected of a Soviet-era Army child who would have learned to stay well away from overt religion. Navalny also reads his Bible. He does not say how he came by it but never claims that it was forbidden by his gaolers - it may after all have been on a list of permitted books.
But Navalny never brands himself as a Christian - all he leaves us with is the value he found in those practices which we are free to take up or leave, as the mood takes us.
