Anyone who reads Alexei Navalny’s posthumously released memoir “Patriot” without connecting the dots between Vladimir Putin’s Russian and Donald Trump’s America is either not paying attention or didn’t learn to connect dots in preschool.
The almost 500-page book has much to teach about the precipice our country is teetering over. But Navalny also left us reasons for hope and strategies for resistance, particularly for those whose advocacy springs forth from a passion for the teachings of Jesus.
Navalny gained prominence in Western media as a leading figure in the fight against the corruption of Putin’s regime. In “Patriot,” Navalny describes how he witnessed the Soviet system’s beneficiaries feign a love for democracy once the empire collapsed, only to discard it when an authoritarian offered them riches and the keys to the kingdom.
These oligarchs gained positions of power and buttressed their already sizable fortunes by massaging Putin’s ego and exploiting their relationship with him to attain lucrative government contracts. In earlier, more precedented times, finding the U.S. equivalent to this was possible, but challenging.
But reading Navalny’s accounts of these ideological shape-shifters, it is hard not to think about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg. These billionaire tech-bros, among others, have brazenly discarded any pretense of an ethical compass as they have purchased positions of power in proximity to one of Putin’s greatest admirers, Donald Trump.
While Putin’s oligarchs use the byzantine and confusing Russian legal system to hide their corruption, the new American oligarchs promise “government efficiency” and “regulatory reform.” This is code for removing any legal restrictions on how much money they can extract from American taxpayers.
Navalny spent the better part of the 2010s using the tools of new media to expose the corruption in the Kremlin and offer better alternatives. When Russian oligarchs claimed they didn’t own massive palaces on expansive estates at the taxpayers’ dime, Navalny and his team of good-troublemakers didn’t scream, “Liars!” They simply showed photos of the estates.
They found the receipts and broadcast them on YouTube. It was viewed over a hundred million times.
When it became clear that the Kremlin maintained power by manipulating the Russian electoral system, which splits the vote of multiple parties (some of which are affiliated with each other), Navalny decided to run for public office himself.
In 2013, he entered the Moscow mayoral election. Under no illusion he would win, Navalny knew the size of his following would produce a result too compelling for the world to ignore. He received 27% of the vote, pulling the curtain back on the supposed dominance of Putin’s “People’s Front” party.
Navalny was barred from running against Putin in the 2018 Presidential election due to a suspended sentence for a bogus, trumped-up conviction for embezzlement. This was despite over 300,000 people from across all regions of Russia signing a petition in favor of his candidacy.
Again, this massive show of support, coupled with subsequent protests throughout the country, revealed a much weaker Putin than the Kremlin had been leading the world to believe.
In a hearing for one of his trials, Navalny described a scenario that feels very familiar in light of the current political moment in the U.S. He called out a judge, who clearly didn’t want to deal with the reality that he was just a pawn in Putin’s game of chess. The judge spent the entire trial just looking down at the table.
Navalny painted this as a microcosm of what was happening in Russia: “There are twenty people who’ve become billionaires who control everything, from state procurement to the sale of oil. Then there’s a further thousand who are feeding at this junta’s trough. No more than a thousand people, in fact: state deputies and crooks. There’s a small percentage of people who don’t agree with this system. And then there are the millions who are simply staring at the table.”
In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent, likely by one of Putin’s henchmen. After recovering from the near-fatal incident in a German hospital, he was arrested upon his return to Russia for violating the conditions of his suspended sentence. He was transferred around Russian prisons and penal colonies for the next three years.
On February 16, 2024, it was announced that Navalny had died in a penal colony in the Russian Arctic. He was 47 years old.
Navalny began writing “Patriot” in Germany while he recovered from being poisoned. The first half of the memoir is part childhood memoir, part narration of his political rise. The last half contains Navalny’s prison diaries.
“Patriot” is a testament to courage. It shows that true patriotism isn’t about blind obedience but exposing unjust systems and corrupt leaders.
The memoir also reveals what Western media often ignores: Navalny’s Christian faith.
His conversion came slowly, after the birth of his first child, a daughter, with his wife Yulia. “Like anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union,” he wrote, “I had never believed in God, but looking now at Dasha and how she was developing, I could not reconcile myself to the thought that this was only a matter of biology.”
He added that he still believed in science, but “I decided at that moment that, on its own, evolution was not enough. There must be more. From a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I gradually became a religious person.”
In one of his trials, he spoke of his faith and how it brings him “constant ridicule” from his colleagues in his anti-corruption work. Regardless, in his speech to the judge, he framed his mission in the biblical witness that those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.” (Matthew 5:5)
In the spring of 2021, Navalny went on a hunger strike to draw international attention to his treatment in prison.
During this time, he also began memorizing the entire Sermon on the Mount in Russian, English, French and Latin. He wrote, “If I was constantly going to find myself standing in line looking at a wall or fence [referring to the time allowed outside his cell], I might as well learn it by heart.”
Through backchannel prison maneuvering, he obtained note cards with the verses written on them. He noted that it was slow work, and for over a month, the cards were confiscated and inspected, presumably for “evidence of extremist content.”
During this time, prisoners were allowed to attend a church service. The passage chosen for the service was the Sermon on the Mount.
Navalny interpreted this as a miracle from God writing, “Sweet Jesus! I almost fainted, and only with immense difficulty kept my teardrops from turning into torrents. I left the church dazed and walking on air. And no longer hungry.”
Navalny’s anti-corruption work in Russia required the same coalition of justice-loving citizens necessary in any society fighting real and aspiring despots. This coalition included people of all faiths and no faith.
However, in the epilogue to “Patriot,” which was written in 2022 when a longer sentence for Navalny was passed down, he wrote that he feels the work may be easier for people of faith:
“I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics…[you must ask] are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is left for you to worry about?… My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.”
“Patriot” was released in October by Knopf and is available wherever books are sold. It is not, however, available for purchase in Russia.
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