Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny wrote an autobiography before he died which will be published later this year, his widow Yulia Navalnaya said on Thursday, revealing the existence of a text his inner circle had kept secret for years.
Navalny, who died aged 47 in an Arctic prison in February, had wanted to become president of Russia and was Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic critic. His allies, branded extremists by the authorities, accused Putin of having him murdered and have said they will provide proof to back that allegation.
The Kremlin has denied any state involvement in his death and, when he was alive, dismissed Navalny, a former lawyer who oversaw corruption investigations into Russia’s political elite, as a marginal U.S.-backed troublemaker out to destabilise Russia.
Navalnaya, his widow, said in a post on X from outside Russia that her late husband had started to write the memoir – titled “Patriot” – in 2020 after he had been poisoned by what Western doctors said was a nerve agent and had been flown to Germany for medical treatment.
She said the book would be released simultaneously in at least 11 different languages on Oct. 22 and appear in Navalny’s native Russian.
“This is not at all how I imagined Alexei would write his biography. I thought that we would be in our 80s, and that he would be sitting at his computer by the open window and be typing away,” Navalnaya said.
“But things turned out the way they did. Horribly and very, very unfairly. Nevertheless, Alexei started writing a book at that time (in 2020) and was unexpectedly quickly drawn into the process.
He liked to recall the events of his life in connection with events in the country. For example, he enjoyed describing his childhood,” Navalnaya said.
