Navalny corresponded with Natan Sharansky, shared gulag experiences, inspiration

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last week in mysterious circumstances, had been corresponding with former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky, the Free Press reports.

The report published the handwritten letters between the two after Navalny reached out to Sharansky, who spent almost nine years in a forced labor camp, to say that he was inspired by Sharansky’s book “Fear No Evil,” and joked that not a lot had changed in the Russian penal system.

“I want to thank you for this book as it has helped me a lot and continues to help. Yes, I am at SHIZO now, but when reading about your 400 days spent in the ‘punishment cell’ on decreased food rations, one understands that there are people who pay much higher prices for their convictions,” Navalny wrote in the first letter dated March 2023.

Navalny says he drew inspiration that the current Russian regime would collapse like the Soviet Union.

Sharansky wrote back a five-page letter, joking that receiving mail from the prison was like “receiving a letter from his ‘alma mater,’ the university where he spent many years of his youth.”

Sharansky said he was a big admirer of Navalny and that he had written his memoir while many of his friends were still imprisoned by the KGB.

“So I envisioned this book not only as a memoir, but also a sort of textbook or manual for how to behave in a confrontation with the KGB,” he wrote.

“I wish to you—no matter how hard it may be physically—to maintain your inner freedom,” Sharansky wrote.

Sharansky moved to Israel after being freed and served as a cabinet minister and chairman of the Jewish Agency.