“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” wrote Alexei Navalny in March 2022, according to excerpts from the memoirs of the number one critic of Vladimir Putin, who died last February.

“There will be no one to say goodbye to. (…) All birthdays will be celebrated without me. I will never see my grandchildren. I won’t be in any family history. I won’t be in any pictures,” Navalny wrote on March 22, 2022, in this prison diary, excerpts of which were published by The New Yorker magazine ahead of the book’s October 22 release.

Returning to Russia in January 2021, a few months after his poisoning, Navalny was arrested. He was serving a 19-year sentence in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle when he died aged 47.

“The only thing we have to fear is leaving our country at the mercy of liars, thieves and hypocrites,” he wrote on January 17, 2022.

Despite the loneliness of his confinement in solitary confinement, Navalny recounted with vitriolic humor, on July 1, 2022, a typical day for him: wake up at 6 am, breakfast at 06:20 and start work at 06:40. “At work you sit for seven hours in front of a sewing machine, on a stool lower than the knee,” he described. “After work, you spend a few hours sitting on a wooden bench, under a portrait of Putin. This is what they call a ‘disciplinary measure,'” Navalny said.

The book entitled “Patriot” will be released on October 22, including in the Russian language, according to the American publishing house Knopf.

The political activist’s death sparked an international outcry, with several Western leaders holding Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin responsible.

The New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick commented that “it is impossible to read Navalny’s prison diary without being outraged by the tragedy of his suffering (he suffered) and his death.”

In the latest excerpt published by the American magazine, Navalny confided on January 17, 2024 that his fellow prisoners and prison officials were wondering why he returned to Russia. “I don’t want to leave my country or betray it. If your beliefs mean something, you have to be ready to defend them and make sacrifices if necessary,” he explained.