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Name: Patriot
Rating: 4.4 (29 reviews)
Author: Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny

A Memoir

4.4 (29 ratings)

20 mins

Brief summary

Patriot chronicles Alexei Navalny's fight against corruption in Russia. The book unveils his journey, challenges, and the broader implications of his activism on Russian politics and society, highlighting relentless advocacy for democratic principles.

Topics

Memoirs Autobiographies Culture Global Politics Political Figures

Table of Contents

Patriot
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Witness the courage of Russia’s leading modern dissident.

On August 20, 2020, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny boarded a flight from Siberia to Moscow, riding high on the momentum of a successful campaign. Despite years of being banned from running for office, his network had found creative ways to win. Their latest investigation into the regime’s excesses had resulted in damning footage of a corrupt official’s private island estate. His team was positioning itself to deliver crushing defeats to regime candidates in upcoming regional elections. But 21 minutes after takeoff, Navalny’s body began to betray him.

It began with cold sweats and a creeping sense that his entire system was failing. There was no pain – just a profound wrongness that defied description. After stumbling to the airplane bathroom, Navalny knew with absolute clarity: he was dying. The poison was Novichok, he learned later; a calling card of Russian state assassination. Navalny managed to tell a flight attendant he’d been poisoned – before lying down on the floor to die.

Eighteen days in a coma gave way to weeks in intensive care at Berlin’s Charité hospital. He had to relearn basic functions: speaking, writing, walking. Yet even as he relearned to walk three meters to the sink, Navalny’s political victory was unfolding. His candidates swept elections in several districts, proving that Putin’s grip could be loosened.

While Navalny would give his life just a few years later, the movement he built would prove harder to silence. In this Blink, we’ll trace Navalny’s remarkable journey from rebellious youth to Putin’s most formidable enemy – and see how he helped Russians imagine a different future for their country.

Lessons from the end

The first time Navalny saw soldiers in white hazmat suits waving radiation detectors, he learned that truth in the Soviet Union was as scarce as butter.

It was the 1980s – the dying days of the Soviet empire. Navalny grew up in a military town near Obninsk – southwest of Moscow. When Chornobyl exploded in 1986, Navalny saw the authorities’ first instinct was to lie – not just about the disaster itself, but about everything surrounding it. They sent people to plant potatoes in radioactive soil, held May Day parades under contaminated skies, and orchestrated elaborate deceptions for foreign journalists. This wasn’t mere incompetence; it was the reflexive response of a system built on the premise that its citizens couldn’t handle truth.

The lives around him were governed by contradictions. People scorned Western excess while coveting its products; party officials preached equality while enjoying special access to basic goods; and the state broadcast programs criticizing foreign rock music – that only made it more appealing. A foreign sugar packet from an Aeroflot flight could become a treasured possession, while chewing gum from abroad held more cultural currency than a hero’s medal.

When the end of the USSR finally came, it arrived with unexpected comedy. The August 1991 putsch revealed not the iron fist of Soviet power but an arthritic trembling. As tanks rolled into Moscow, their crews ended up sharing sandwiches with protesters instead of suppressing them. The coup leaders, speaking in fossilized Soviet clichés, seemed like characters from a political farce rather than serious contenders for power.

Yet the aftermath brought its own tragedies. The USSR’s collapse left millions of Russians stranded across newly independent states. The failure to properly address this diaspora created wounds that would fester for decades. These would provide convenient grievances for those who, like Putin, would build power on nostalgia – nostalgia for a Soviet Union they themselves had helped dismantle.

Early signs of defiance

Navalny’s early life was shaped by a peculiar mix of discipline and disruption. His education revealed a mind more attuned to literature and history than mathematics, though he managed to maintain solid grades in every subject. He had a reputation as a rebellious classroom joker – constantly making remarks and challenging teachers – an early manifestation of his refusal to accept authority without question.

A defining moment came during adolescence when he confronted a bully who’d been extorting money from him. In a burst of desperate courage, fueled more by fear than bravado, Navalny attacked his tormentor. This incident taught him a crucial lesson: sometimes the most courageous actions spring from sheer desperation.

Following the money

After completing his law degree in the late 1990s, Navalny entered Moscow’s rapidly expanding corporate sector – just as Russia’s new capitalism was taking shape. He joined a large property development company; one whose headquarters shared space with Moscow’s construction department – a cozy arrangement that reflected the intimate relationships between business and government in post–Soviet Russia.

Navalny’s role involved handling contracts for Cyprus-based offshore companies. The office environment was a microcosm of the era: company executives pulled up in Mercedes S-Class vehicles with personal security details, bureaucrats demanded bribes for permits, and colleagues schemed to move money through offshore accounts.

Dissent

The years after joining Yabloko saw Navalny testing different forms of opposition, from organizing street protests to serving as an advisor to a regional governor. Finding the party leadership too timid, Navalny began searching for more direct ways to challenge the regime.

By 2008, Navalny had developed an innovative approach to fighting corruption. Using his financial background, he purchased small amounts of shares in major state companies like Gazprom, the state oil company, and VTB Bank, giving him legal standing to investigate their operations. This gained him access to internal documents and let him confront corrupt executives face-to-face at annual meetings. He revealed billions in embezzled funds, capturing public attention and establishing his reputation as a fearless activist.

Clashes with the state

Navalny’s rise to prominence marked a new chapter in Russian opposition politics, one that would eventually force the Kremlin to abandon its pretense of democratic tolerance.

By 2012, Navalny had become threatening enough that the Kremlin launched a coordinated campaign against him. It brought four simultaneous criminal cases, targeting not just Navalny but his family. The most notorious of these was the Yves Rocher case, which eventually sent his brother Oleg to prison for three and a half years.

The final chapter

In September of 2020, 18 days after his poisoning with Novichok, Alexei Navalny began to emerge from his coma. The process was nothing like the movies suggest – no sudden awakening to concerned faces and bright hospital lights. Instead, Navalny’s return to consciousness was a weeks-long fever dream. Reality and hallucination blended seamlessly – a kindly Japanese professor who never existed, prison walls covered in imaginary rap lyrics, and desperate attempts to escape guards stationed outside his room.

The staff at Berlin’s Charité hospital repeatedly asked him to say any word at all, but he couldn’t figure out how. When he finally managed speech, they gave him a pencil, but he’d forgotten how to write. Through it all, Navalny’s wife Yulia kept a quiet vigil, marking each day of his intensive care stay with a heart drawn on the whiteboard opposite his bed. She drew 34 of them before Navalny could fully distinguish reality from his vivid hallucinations.

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What is Patriot about?

Patriot (2024) is the final testament of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader. Written in the aftermath of his poisoning, it chronicles his journey from activist to political prisoner, weaving together his personal life, political battles, and unwavering fight for democracy.

Who should read Patriot?

Anyone interested in how modern opposition movements adapt and survive
Digital activists and social media strategists
Fans of modern history

About the Author

Alexei Navalny was Russia’s leading opposition figure and anti-corruption activist. He earned global acclaim for his fearless pursuit of democratic reforms, culminating in his receipt of the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Prize for human rights.

Categories with Patriot

Biography & Memoir Society & Culture Politics

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