Navalny’s wardens permitted him to keep some notebooks, and he began to document, in meticulous detail, life behind bars ... Navalny’s indefatigable goodness is all the more poignant.
Honest, full of penetrating wit and with a nice ear for mockery, he was nonetheless as cheerful and empathetic as Putin is malevolent and threatening. He wielded cheerfulness as a weapon and never lost faith that the right side must eventually prevail, even if he might no longer be around to see it.
The chance to hear his own written voice, to spend serious time with him (nearly 500 pages), only reinforces this impression, along with the pain of having lost him ... Who else but someone with such reserves of fortitude, with such a sense of self, with such an ability to laugh but also believe, would be able to withstand such indignity, such mental torture? He allowed himself, his actual body, to represent another kind of Russia, a freer country. And he did so knowing that he might never actually ever see it with his own eyes.
Very sad ... This book as it stands sometimes feels like a palimpsest, a reconstruction of the memoir he would have written had he lived in health and liberty.
The first half of Patriot – compelling, impressive, only occasionally a mite self-indulgent – gives us a standard memoiristic account of Navalny’s political development ... The second half concentrates on the meticulous diaries Navalny manages to keep during his incarceration, a remarkable achievement given the brutal conditions in which he’s often held. There’s a deep pathos to this part of the book: the reader knows how his anti-Putin stand will end.
This tragic ending looms over the memoir, which is at once a worthy testament to the author’s resistance to Putin and a heartbreaking account of Russia’s collapse into war and repression. Though by definition it feels incomplete, the book is also the best example left to us of Navalny’s defiance, courage, humor, and love for a country he believed could become 'the beautiful Russia of the future' ... The final third of Patriot is made up of Navalny’s prison diaries. Though he narrates his dire predicament and Russia’s concurrent plunge into darkness with his usual wit, knowing how things end makes this a sobering read.
