American journalist Bari Weiss revealed Monday that in April 2023, then-jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison several days ago under dubious circumstances, corresponded with the famous Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky, the Free Press reported Monday. Navalny wrote to Sharansky that he had read his book about the years of struggle against the Communist regime, "Fear No Evil". He also quotes from the Bible that "what has been will be again" and adds that he "continues to believe that we will fix this and that one day in Russia there will be what has not been."
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The letters are full of sharp quips and were passed on by Navalny's lawyers from prison. Sharansky's office confirmed that the publication is authentic. Sharansky tells Israel Hayom after the disclosure of the exchange of letters: "Alexei Navalny was dangerous to the Russian tyrant for two reasons: He did more than anyone else to expose the nature of the Russian dictatorship to the eyes of hundreds of millions of people, and he challenged the system. Navalny proved that it is possible to remain a free man until your last breath in prison."
In the first letter, from March 30 last year, Navalny writes that he is probably destined to be transferred to the facility where Sharansky was previously held. "Only there will probably already be a plaque 'Sharansky sat here'," the Russian oppositionist writes with his typical humor at the opening of his letter.
"I apologize for the intrusion (to your life) and a letter from a stranger," Navalny writes, "but I think such a thing is permissible in author-reader relations. I am writing to you as a reader. I read 'Fear No Evil' in my cell, but now I am in solitary confinement (it will soon be 128 days in total). You wrote in your book that 'they gave a series of 15-day isolations and then as an offender again for six months in a cell'. I laughed at the fact that nothing has changed in this system - neither its essence nor its method of operation.
"This book is very helpful to me," Navalny writes. "Yes, I am in punitive isolation, but when you read about your 400 days in solitary confinement with limited nutrition, you understand that there are people who paid a higher price than you for their beliefs. I see the postcard your wife Avital sent you: All the words on it are censored. And then I go to a court hearing, where I am told that the burning of letters addressed to me is legal because they contained code. I am not the first to suffer this, but I would very much like to be the last, or at least one of the last, to be forced to endure this. Your book gives hope because the similarity between the systems of the USSR and Putin's Russia, their ideological proximity, the hypocrisy as the basis of the regime, and their continuity also promise the collapse.
"Most importantly, it is necessary to draw the right conclusions so that this state of lies and hypocrisy does not renew itself (afterward). You write that the dissidents developed the 'virus of freedom', and that the KGB should not be allowed to develop a vaccine against it. Unfortunately, they did develop one. But it is not they who are responsible, but us, who naively thought that there would be no return to the past, and for good purposes it is possible to falsify elections a bit here, give instructions to the courts there, put pressure on the media here. Such trifles and belief in authoritarian modernization made up the vaccine.
"And yet, the virus of freedom is not dead. Not tens or hundreds, but tens and hundreds of thousands are ready to go out for freedom and against the war, despite the threats. Hundreds of them are already in prisons, but I am convinced that they will not break and will not surrender. Many of them find strength, among other things, in your story and legacy, and I am one of them. Thank you." Navalny concludes the letter with the words "Next year in Jerusalem", written in Cyrillic letters.
Sharansky's letter is also very moving. "Dear and most esteemed Alexei, your letter shook me. The mere thought that it comes from the very same punitive detention facility where you were locked up for 128 days excites me. As if I were an old man receiving a letter from his alma mater, from the university where he spent his youth. I am writing to you not only as a writer to a reader but also as an admirer."
Sharansky recounts that his book was published when the Soviet Union was already in the process of disintegration, and therefore, with the passage of time, it was increasingly read as a historical novel. "And here the dream has come true," he writes with bitter irony, referring to the Putin regime.
"Now, as an admirer. Alexei, you are not just a dissident," Sharansky adds, "you are a dissident with a style! The horror of your poisoning mingled with amazement at your investigations [after recovering in Germany, Navalny and his team published a massive investigation into Putin's secret palace and also exposed the assassination squad that reconstructed how they tried to assassinate Navalny].
"A question from a European journalist the day after your return to Russia stunned me. 'Why did he return? We all understood that he would be arrested immediately at the airport -- and he didn't understand?' I protested at her: 'It is you who do not understand. If he were only concerned about his own survival, then yes, you are right, but he cares for his people as if he is saying, 'I am not afraid, and you should not be afraid.' I wish you, no matter how hard it may be physically, to maintain your inner freedom.' Alexei, remain a free man, so you will influence millions of souls around the world."
Sharansky concludes the letter by writing just before Passover and wishing him and all of Russia an "exodus from Egypt" from its current situation.
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