‘Faith makes life simpler,’ wrote Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, shortly before his suspicious death in an Arctic penal colony.
The recent paperback edition of his autobiography, Patriot – first published shortly after his death in February 2024 – is ready to bring Navalny’s courage and commitment to wider audiences around the globe.
Navalny tells of his Christian faith, and his project to memorise Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in several languages while in prison.
The 47-year-old campaigner and blogger has been described as “probably the most outstanding face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin.” Navalny had survived poisoning attacks and years in a few of Russia’s most notorious jails. His group had exposed corruption in lots of parts of the Russian state, including involving President Putin.
Last yr in February, Navalny fell silent. Prison authorities say he had gone for a walk, had lost consciousness and died. His supporters, and plenty of people and governments around the globe are more sceptical.
In Patriot, Navalny writes movingly of his Christian faith. He said, “I even have at all times thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to a good greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.”
While in prison, Navalny sought to memorise the 111 verses of the Sermon on the Mount – in Russian, English, French and Latin. He writes, “After an intricate covert operation extending over two months, I managed to amass 111 cards that my press secretary, Kira, had made for me. Each has on one side the variety of the verse, and the opposite the text in 4 languages.”
He challenges his readers, “Are you a disciple of the faith whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the value for his or her sins? Do you think within the immortality of the soul and the remaining of the cool stuff? If you possibly can truthfully answer yes, what’s there left so that you can worry about?”
In the ultimate words of his poignant autobiography, Navalny writes, “My job is to hunt the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and leave it to Jesus and the remaining of his family to take care of all the pieces else. They won’t let me down and can sort out all my headaches. As they are saying in prison here: they may take my punches for me.”
Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia, continues the opposition to Vladimir Putin, refusing to call him ‘President,’ because she doesn’t accept the legitimacy of his election. Earlier this yr, she spoke at events within the UK, including the ‘Truth Tellers’ conference in London, hosted by Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni, vice chancellor of Durham University Karen O’Brien and distinguished editor and journalist Tina Brown.
Rev Peter Crumpler is a Church of England minister in St Albans, Herts, UK, and a former communications director with the CofE.
