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Photo by Michael Probst/Associated Press

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny

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Aleksei A. Navalny

4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024

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Inside Aleksei Navalny’s Final Months

Excerpts from the Unlocked' NY Times Article

Quoted from letters sent from a small cell in the Arctic...

Confined to cold, concrete cells and often alone with his books, Aleksei A. Navalny sought solace in letters. To one acquaintance, he wrote in July that no one could understand Russian prison life “without having been here,” adding in his deadpan humor: “But there’s no need to be here.” ...

Many details about his last months — as well as the circumstances of his death, which the Russian authorities announced on Friday — remain unknown; even the whereabouts of his body are unclear. ...

Even as brutal prison conditions took their toll on his body — he was often denied medical and dental treatment — there was no hint that Mr. Navalny had lost his clarity of mind, his writings show. ...

"I really miss the daily grind — news about life, food, salaries, gossip.”

Kerry Kennedy, a human-rights activist and the daughter of the Democratic politician Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, also exchanged letters with Mr. Navalny. He told her that he had cried “two or three times” while reading a book about her father recommended by a friend, according to a copy of a letter, handwritten in English, that Ms. Kennedy posted on Instagram after Mr. Navalny died.

Mr. Navalny thanked Ms. Kennedy for sending him a poster with a quote from her father’s speech about how a “ripple of hope,” multiplied a million times, “can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

“I hope one day I’ll be able to hang it on the wall of my office,” Mr. Navalny wrote. ...

Mr. Krasilshchik... said he was left to ruminate on the last letter he received, in September. Mr. Navalny concluded it by positing that if South Korea and Taiwan were able to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy, then perhaps Russia could, too.

“Hope. I’ve got no problem with it,” Mr. Navalny wrote.

He signed off: “Keep writing! A.”

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