Alexei Navalny survived through difficult times in a brutal Siberian prison by cracking jokes and handwriting letters, according to a survivor.
Natan Sharansky, 76, was a political dissident and Israeli former minister who endured almost nine years in Soviet prisons, including the same Arctic prison where Navalny died.
Even though they had never met in person, the activists formed a close bond by exchanging letters about their shared experience back in 2023.
Navalny first reached out the former Soviet dissident by joking how little the Russian penal system has changed since Sharansky was a prisoner – which was cited in Sharansky’s book ‘Fear No Evil’.
In one of their letters, Sharansky calls the punishment cell his “alma mater”, and tells Navalny – an admirer of his book – that there is no better place to spend Holy Week than in the punishment cell.
READ MORE: Alexei Navalny’s ‘tortured’ body returned to his mother 9 days after his death
The letters, both translated in Russian and English, were first published by the Free Press.
Sharanksy praised Navalny as a “hero” and revealed the type of methods they each used to cope and preservere through egregious conditions in prison, he told DailyMail.com.
Sharanksy told the outlet of his own experiences: “I was in a small room, like six square metres, very cold, they take away all the warm clothes.
“Three pieces of bread, three cups of water a day, nobody to talk to, nothing to write or read, no bed, no normal table.
“You have to remind yourself through all this why you’re there and to find the way to feel very deeply that you are in the middle of the struggle, to continue saying no to KGB and not to give up to this pressure which you experience every moment.
“In my case I also played a lot of chess in my head, in Navalny’s case I think he was spending a lot of time joking (and) mocking the border guards.
“But you really have to find a way to both be very serious and feel yourself in the centre of the struggle, and to laugh at the system, to dismiss it – to overcome it.
“You become physically weaker and weaker, you are losing weight, but it’s important not to lose your moral integrity.”
Navalny, who died aged 47, was Russia’s most well-known critic of the Kremlin. He died on February 16 in an Arctic penal colony.
His body has been handed over to his mother, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation said on Saturday.
“Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who wrote and recorded video messages. You all did what you needed to do. Thank you. Alexei Navalny’s body has been given to his mother,” Ivan Zhdanov wrote on his Telegram account.
