Patriot: Alexei Navalny's memoir is as 'compelling as it is painful'

The anti-corruption campaigner's harrowing book was published posthumously after his death in a remote Arctic prison

Alexei Navalny
Patriot is a harrowing, meticulous account of Navalny's horrific treatment by the Russian authorities
(Image credit: Getty / Anadolu)

"Alexei Navalny did not set out to write a posthumous memoir," said David Kortava in The New York Times. The anti-corruption campaigner began this book in 2020, while recovering in Berlin from being poisoned with Novichok on a domestic flight in Russia. He envisaged it as a conventional autobiography that would culminate in an "intriguing thriller about uncovering an assassination attempt". But he never finished the manuscript.

Months later, upon returning to Russia, Navalny was arrested – and spent the remaining three years of his life in jail. The first half of "Patriot" is made up of this unfinished memoir; the rest consists of a diary from his time in prison, much of which he managed to smuggle out. Such a book could easily have been a "righteous diatribe"; in fact, it's a harrowing, meticulous account of Navalny's horrific treatment by the Russian authorities.

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