Patriot, by Alexei Navalny
by
Stuart Holland
This right here. This is riveting shit. Right from the get-go, a first hand, first person account of Alexei Navalny’s experience being poisoned by novichok nerve agent is a high stakes way to open a book. The experience that he describes is not at all what I imagined being poisoned would feel like, and it seems like he had similar thoughts. It’s not gruesome, but instead bizarre. The way the story is told sucks you right in, wondering how he survived it (I did know he survived the poisoning from the news).
The poisoning is the headliner and draws the reader in. But there’s much more and deeper to this book. It goes back, after the poisoning, to Alexei’s childhood in the Soviet Union. He describes a time of ridiculous falsehoods and pervasive propaganda that were clearly not believable, but the society around them had to pretend to believe it. At the same time, it was a strangely unmonitored place where young boys could blow up discarded munitions without attracting much attention.
Then the book marches forward toward the present, through the happenings in Russia from the end of the Soviet Union and up toward today. When it reaches 2021 it becomes a kind of prison diary, of the time Navalny spent in various Russian prisons and being ferried between various sham trials and preposterous criminal charges. It follows his struggles there through his notes and Instagram posts communicated through his lawyers, until his eventual death in 2024.
It’s quite the series of events. I don’t want to agonize trying to do this story justice, because I don’t think I can. Suffice to say this book stands out as an abject lesson in the essential nature of freedom in society. Alexei Navalny stood up against corruption and was killed for it. He’s not a man without flaws, but it seems ridiculous that I feel compelled to point that out. The long arc of his objectives clearly aim to make the world a better place.
It’s easy to talk about freedom in the abstract. It’s easy to talk about democracy in the abstract. This book makes it real. This is what happens when you don’t have those things. This is the end state of Trump, Farage, and the other wanna-be dictators who seek to control free society. Vladimir Putin clearly won’t live forever, but the evils he commits don’t end with him. I’m sympathetic to the opinion that threats to democracy are too far away, too removed from people’s lives, to be the deciding factor on votes when people have so many other problems. Those other problems should be fixed, and with urgency. And without the freedoms that are necessary for a just life, all those other problems become systematically unsolvable. That’s why it’s important to care about democracy and freedom directly too. Votes can only change things when a society is free enough to have them.
And I don’t think I can talk about this book without talking about Russia’s war in Ukraine. This book is much more about Russia than Ukraine - about how Russia could be a better place but isn’t, and how that’s intentional on Putin’s part. Navalny was in prison when Russia invaded Ukraine (again) in 2022, and the bulk of the story takes place before 2021. He opposes the war and says so in the book, as you might expect, given his other positions. In the context of this story, you can see how such a terrible war is prosecuted in service to a corrupt regime. The lies and greed lead to atrocities that cost thousands upon thousands of lives.
Navalny’s story shows what happens when freedoms are lost. Throughout this book he makes impassioned and convincing arguments for why those freedoms are essential. Why they help everyone, and why they are necessary to solve the other, acute problems like food, fuel, and shelter. I hope his vision for a more free and fair Russia does some day come to pass.
This is a heavier, more serious review than I usually write. And that’s because the book and the subject matter warrant it. It’s a bit strange to post this alongside my smart home minutiae and video game musings. But I’m reminded of a tweet I read back in 2020 that made me stop and think and it has stayed with me as good advice. Paraphrasing, the author said that she had heard people held back from posting serious criticisms of racism or their opinions on it because it seemed out of place: that their regular lighthearted content that was all around those messages detracted from the severity of that topic. She said: don’t do that. Post your criticisms of racism between your spicy TV show takes and daily life. Because most people agree. But they also don’t talk about it. And every message helps others to see that truth, justice, and freedom are things that other people support too. She didn’t say it exactly like that, because that was too long for a tweet, but hopefully you get the idea. I like that idea. It’s why I still thought it was worthwhile to talk about freedom and democracy here, even though usually I’m reviewing books about dudes with swords casting spells. (Racism is bad btw.)
Anyway, back to Alexei Navalny. This book is incredible. It’s a much more nuanced and funnier read than my review here. You should read it.
The book’s called Patriot, but honestly the man’s a hero.
