Headlines used to be about information, about what was going on in the world. I remember those times with nostalgia. Possibly the world was a clown show back then as well, and I just wasn’t paying attention.

This year, I listened to the audiobook of Patriot, the posthumously published memoir of Russian democracy activist and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. I expected this to be tough listening. How could it not be, since I knew all the horrible things that had been done to its writer? I braced myself.

Then the opening whacked me over the head. It begins, “Dying didn't really hurt” and goes on to tell of the flight from Tomsk to Moscow, when Navalny realized he was feeling strangely unwell. In reality, as he’d find out only later, he’d been poisoned by a nerve agent applied to his clothes.

Somewhere between “Something is definitely not right” and “it’s all lies, what they say about death,” the narrative cut in so painfully close that I forgot about bolstering my nerves and gave myself up to it. At which point I realized I was in the hands of a storyteller with something essential to say.

Navalny writes lightly and affectionately of his youth, which he presents with the clear-eyed view of one who recalls childhood without being in the least sentimental about it. We get to see his visits to his Ukrainian grandmother, to understand that he was equal parts Russian and Ukrainian. We see the Chernobyl disaster through his 9-year-old eyes, and The Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia through his ill-informed and eagerly nerdy student persona.

The writing carries the self-deprecating humor he became known for. Hearing these words, I’m keenly aware of what’s transpiring south of the Canadian border, where commentators are wondering if the US is becoming an autocracy:

How did I feel about the collapse of the USSR? Well, I never saw it. I had no sense of anything of the sort. What was falling apart was a regime and like everyone else, it seemed, at the time, I rejoiced as chunks of it bit the dust. The greater the chunk, the greater my jubilation.

Retrospective narratives are always self-aware, but Navalny’s plays with the reader’s grasp of his situation. He knows whoever is reading this book has seen the news, knows what has happened. Chapter 8 begins:

Wow! What a dramatic turn in my book! In such cases it is traditional in fiction to write something along the lines of “smooth flow of my narrative is disrupted at this point by such and such event.” Mine certainly has been. My last chapter was written in a beautiful house in Freiburg, Germany. This chapter is being written in prison.

This is the story of a remarkable life. The ordinary boy growing up in an extraordinary time goes to college, tries on occupational options for size, ends up infuriated with the system and becomes an activist. His marriage and family narratives intertwine with his daring to take on an authoritarian super-power that turns its force upon him. He projects a touching combination of irony and unrelenting optimism. He reflects on the absurdity of the Putinist regime, on the casual nature of its brutality. The horror of what is done to him filters through humane observations of his fellow prisoners and even his guards and inquisitors.

He misses his children terribly. He attends hearings, gets sentenced, appeals absurd verdicts through indefatigable allies led by his wife. As he writes, he notes that it's likely there’s a surveillance camera recording him.

March 12 (2021): Today is Friday, and seemingly, some petty-minded cops have stolen my diary, so many days’ entries have been lost. Too bad. I’m starting again in a new notebook. A lot has happened…

He reads insatiably. He reads in Russian, then English and French. People send him books. He loses himself in some, comments wryly on others.

Almost all the words I don't know (which I write down in a notebook) come from Agatha Christie, diabolical Anglicisms nobody has been using for decades.

When he’s moved from one penal colony to another even more hellish, he does his best to lug his books with him. He seems unstoppable, until we know he has been stopped.

But Navalny’s words can’t be erased, nor can his life be expunged from the record, however much the Russian regime would like that.

Putin has rid himself of his satirical critic and is now in a love-hate face-off with a current American would-be despot. As Navalny puts it in a 2021 diary excerpt:

Everything is getting more farcical. On Friday I discussed with Liptser* the tricks the Federal Penitentiary Service use to combat hunger strikes. He said, "They moved this dude in with my client, who was on a hunger strike, and then gave the guy a huge pile of fried chicken so he could set it in front of the hunger striker.” I laughed.
[*Alexei Liptser, one of Navalny’s lawyers, himself now jailed and in a penal colony]

It may be scant comfort to think that Navalny is still taunting Putin from beyond the grave, but this book is a signal to us, here in North America. Tyranny can creep in on the heels of elections, and tyrants don’t like to be laughed at.

“Everything is Getting More Farcical.” Listening to Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny

Guest Post: Karen Leggett Abouraya Talks Art Process with Susan L. Roth