What is more, he is adding to the arsenal of previous tyrants a kind of cool scientism that does not even seek an ideological justification. But Putin also massacres Ukrainians, after having exterminated Chechnyans. Stalin massacred many people, especially Ukrainians. Of course, prisons are not the only measure. Today’s Russia, as revealed by its prisons, is thus crueler than the previous regimes ever were. And he had the paper and pencil necessary to write his memoirs. But Solzhenitsyn was treated for cancer in the Gulag, where he recovered. To be sure, the Gulag Archipelago was a harsh place, where one froze in the winter. Navalny would probably like to go back to Chekov’s time-or even to the time of Solzhenitsyn. The air was pure, as Chekov relates, and the prisoners’ main complaint was that Sakhalin was far from home they did not want to be buried in Asia, so far from their European birthplace. Chekov traveled all the way to the penal colony of Sakhalin Island to assess the condition of the prisoners. And at the end of the nineteenth century, the Czars were becoming more humane under European influence. Putin’s regime is far crueler than the Czars’ ever was. If Navalny had the choice, he would surely go back to Dostoyevsky’s time. The horror was tempered by a kind of camaraderie. Dostoyevsky, in The House of the Dead, relates his experience: collective detention rooms, with their fleas and their filth, but also their sharing of tea and alcohol. We know this from literature: many Russian writers have endured prison and lived to tell about it. This is not quite right since Russian prisons have evolved as reflections of the regimes that have used them to muzzle opposition. One might object that Russia’s history is a litany of imprisonments-nothing new under Putin. What Navalny says to us, and what he embodies, is the authentic Russian person, free and devoted to democracy, contrary to European prejudices concerning the supposed fate of Russia. They are like those other prisoners, recently released from their cells, sent off to be massacred on the Ukrainian front. Instead, they are subjected they are Putin’s prisoners. They do not willingly abandon themselves to servitude, as if bound to some mysterious fate. What Navalny has to say to us is important: Russians are not born to be slaves, either by nature or by culture they aspire, like all peoples, to liberty. Navalny’s current fight, like Liu’s before him, aims as much at the outside world as at national public opinion, which often remains ignorant of his plight, and even his existence. How is it that they have no fear, especially concerning torture and death? They seem to me almost inhuman, and I do not claim to understand them completely. I have had the honor of meeting all of them except Gandhi, and I remain shaken by the experiences. He belongs to a class of human beings, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Liu Xiaobo (a Chinese winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), and Nelson Mandela, who staked their lives on the causes they embody. I say this based on my own meeting with him. Does Navalny seek martyrdom? He endures it, but he does not seek it. ![]() Why did he return? In order to demonstrate the corruption of Russian justice, it seems. Navalny, who had gone to Germany for medical care, returned voluntarily to be judged by a puppet court and condemned to decades in prison. Putin tried to poison him, a method he is fond of, but without success. The prisoner is Alexei Navalny, an opponent of Vladimir Putin, seemingly the only remaining one well-known outside Russia. Occasionally, the prisoner is taken out and subjected to forced labor-sewing while seated on a chair that is too low for his large, emaciated body. For ten hours a day, he must stand, under the observation of sadistic guards. Thanks to international pressure, he has gained one privilege: a tea kettle. The prisoner, with back problems and a cough, receives no medical treatment. Is there a window? I doubt it, but his lawyer doesn’t tell us. It is made of concrete, freezing in winter and torrid in summer. His cell measures two meters by three meters.
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