Alexei Navalny’s devastating jail letters to Natan Sharansky
- Alexei Navalny shared letters laced with darkish humor, non secular references and grim insights into jail life with a former gulag survivor, Natan Sharansky
- Navalny was killed aged 47 at a penal colony often called the ‘Polar Wolf’ in Siberia on Friday, and the duo exchanged letters in March and April 2023
- Sharansky, 76, was held in a Moscow labor camp for 9 years from 1978 after being denied permission to depart what was then the Soviet Union for Israel
Alexei Navalny shared letters laced with darkish humor, non secular references, and grim insights into jail life with gulag survivor Natan Sharansky within the yr earlier than he died, it has been revealed.
Navalny, 47, who was the strongest home political pressure opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin, exchanged deeply private memos with Israel’s former deputy prime minister Sharansky, 76, in March and April 2023.
In his first observe, he wrote ‘I hope I’m the final to endure this’, simply lower than a yr earlier than he was allegedly fatally poisoned with Novichok at a penal colony often called the ‘Polar Wolf’ in Siberia on February 16, 2024.
Sharansky was held in a Moscow labor camp for 9 years from 1978 after being denied permission to depart what was then the Soviet Union for Israel, and the 2 bonded over how little has modified within the brutal Russian jail system since.
Their historic friendship – memorialized within the letters obtained by The Free Press – was sparked by Navalny’s revelation that he learn Sharansky’s memoir, Fear No Evil, within the gulag the place he died.
Alexei Navalny shared letters laced with darkish humor, non secular references and grim insights into jail life with a former gulag survivor, Natan Sharansky, within the yr earlier than he died, their newly-published notes reveal
Former deputy prime minister for Israel Sharansky, 76, was held in a Moscow labor camp for 9 years from 1978 after being denied permission to depart what was then the Soviet Union for Israel
A basic view of a church (R) for the prisoners of the IK-3 penal colony, the place Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny served his jail time period and the place he died, in Kharp settlement close to Salekhard, Yamal-Nenets Region, Russia
They had been strangers when Navalny started the correspondence – penning his first letter to Sharansky on April 3 from IK-6 ‘Melekhovo,’ – a facility round 155 miles east of Moscow recognized for the abuse and torture of inmates.
Sharansky was held on the identical colony for a time, and Navalny joked ‘I’m not positive if in case you have retained heat recollections of it’ in his opening letter.
‘Now there’ll most likely be a plaque saying “Natan Sharansky was held here”‘, he added.
‘Please forgive the intrusion and a letter from a stranger, however I consider it is permissible in author-reader relations.’
Navalny thanked Sharansky for his e-book as a result of ‘it has helped me lots’ whereas enduring unimaginable situations.
‘I perceive that I’m not the primary, however I actually need to turn into the final, or at the very least one of many final, of those that are compelled to endure this,’ he wrote.
Navalny mentioned Fear No Evil gave him ‘hope’ due to the ‘similarity between the 2 techniques – the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia’ which uncovered ‘the hypocrisy that serves because the very foundation of their essence’.
He mentioned this ‘ensures an equally inevitable collapse’ of Putin’s regime like the autumn of the USSR in 1991.
The e-book additionally prompted an surprising giggle from the prisoner.
‘I used to be laughing after I was studying the passage the place you wrote, “I was penalized with a series of 15 days at SHIZO, and then, as an offender who broke prison rules, they sent me to the PKT for 6 months.”
‘I was amused by the fact that neither the essence of the system nor the pattern of its acts has changed.’
Alexei and Yulia met while on holiday in Turkey
Sharansky wrote back the same day from Jerusalem, saying he ‘experienced a kind of shock receiving a letter from you’ and referring addressing Navalny as ‘dear esteemed Aleksei’.
‘The thought itself that it came directly from SHIZO, where you have already spent 128 days, excites in a way that an old man would be excited, receiving a letter from his ‘alma mater,’ the university where he spent many years of his youth,’ Sharansky wrote.
He noted that Vladimir Kara-Murza, another jailed dissident who remains behind bars today, has also written to him about how the book still served as a guide to Russian prison today. ‘My misfortune has brought about this silver lining,’ he said.
Describing himself as ‘an admirer’ of Navalny, Sharansky said: ‘Aleksei, you are not just a dissident—you are a dissident “with a style”!
‘My horror over your poisoning changed to amazement and exhilaration when you started your own independent investigation.’
‘I wish to you—no matter how hard it may be physically—to maintain your inner freedom,’ he added.
Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, left, and Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky shake hands before talks in Moscow, Tuesday March 3, 1998
Natan Sharansky in 1999. Sharansky was jailed while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in Siberian prison
‘In prison I discovered that in addition to the law of universal gravitation of particles there is also a law of universal gravitation of souls. By remaining a free person in prison, you, Aleksei, influence the souls of millions of people worldwide.’
Sharansky was jailed while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in Siberian prison.
He noted that he was writing to Navalny the day before Passover – ‘the celebration of the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery 3,500 years ago’ – and signed off his letter to the jailed activist with ‘hugs’.
Navalny wrote back four days later saying he was so overjoyed to receive a response from the author that he cried.
‘I was so touched that I had to hide my tears from my cellmates,’ Navalny wrote.
‘And this is the second time you do it to me! In the last page of “Fear No Evil,” where you write “forgive my being a little late,” it is of course impossible not to start crying.
Vladimir Putin has been accused of orchestrating Alexei Navalny’s death
It was most recently reported that Navalny died of ‘sudden death syndrome’, but no details were given to back this claim up
‘In your alma mater everything is as it was. Traditions are honored. On Friday evening, they let me out of the SHIZO, today on Monday—I got another 15 days. Everything according to “Ecclesiastes”: what was, will be.
‘But I continue to believe that we will correct it and one day in Russia there will be what was not. And will not be what was.’
Sharansky responded 10 days later, on April 17, saying he was grateful his letters were reaching Navalny.
He signed off with a chilling comment: ‘Judging by all of your time in SHIZO, you will soon beat all of my records. I hope you don’t succeed in this.’
Navalny died lower than a yr later, along with his widow Yulia saying he was poisoned with Novichok.
In a video message, Yulia Navalnya, 47, said: ‘Vladimir Putin killed my husband.’ Holding back tears, she pledged to carry on her husband’s work and fight for a free Russia with the help of its citizens.
Navalnaya accused the Russian authorities of hiding Navalny’s physique and of ready for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to vanish from his physique.
