Patriot: A Memoir

But how to get the people to vote? By persuasion? Offering rewards? We chose the option of getting people really pissed off. For the last several years my colleagues and I had been filming a never-ending soap opera about corruption in Russia. Of late, almost every episode had garnered three to five million views on YouTube. Given the realities of Russia, from the outset we turned our backs on the pussyfooting journalistic approach of endless qualifiers—“alleged,” “possible,” “purported”—so beloved by legal advisers. We called a thief a thief, corruption, corruption. If somebody had an enormous estate, we did not merely point out its existence, but rather videoed it with drones and showed the property in all its magnificence. And we learned its value and juxtaposed it with the modest income the bureaucrat who owned it was declaring officially. You can theorize all you want about corruption, but I’ve preferred a more direct approach—like studying the wedding photographs of the president’s press secretary and, as he kisses the bride, focusing on the spectacular watch peeping out from his shirtsleeve. We obtained certification from a Swiss supplier that the watch costs $620,000, and exposed it to the citizens of our country, where one person in five is living below the poverty line - $160 a month, which would be more accurately described as the destitution line. Having sufficiently enraged your viewers with the brazenness of corrupt officialdom, you then point them to a website which lists who in their region they should vote for if they don’t want to continue to support their bureaucrats’ life of luxury. It worked.

can easily tell when you touch your wrist and when you don’t. That is because, after acetylcholine transmits a signal between nerve cells, your body secretes cholinesterase, an enzyme that stops that signal when the job is done. It destroys the “used” acetylcholine and with it all traces of the signal transmitted to the brain. If that did not happen, the brain would receive signals about the wrist being touched over and over, millions of times. It would be similar to a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on a website: click once and the site opens; click a million times per second and the site crashes. To cope with a DDOS attack, you can reload the server or install a more powerful one. With human beings it’s less straightforward. Bombarded by billions of false signals, the brain becomes completely disoriented, unable to process what is going on, and eventually shuts down. After some time a person stops breathing, which, after all, is also controlled by the brain. That is how nerve agents work.

The standard and completely moronic response of the Soviet—and subsequently of the Russian—authorities to any crisis is to decide that it is in the interests of the population that they should be lied to endlessly. Otherwise, the reasoning goes, people are sure to run out of their homes, rush around in a state of anarchy, set buildings on fire, and kill each other!

The truth of the matter is that nothing of that sort has ever happened. In most crises the population is prepared to behave in a rational and disciplined manner, especially if the situation were to be explained to them and they were told what needed to be done. Instead, as I have since seen on a less dramatic scale many times, the first official reaction is invariably to lie. There is no practical benefit to the officials doing so; it is simply a rule: In an awkward situation, lie. Play down the damage, deny everything, bluff. It can all be sorted out later, but right now, at the moment of crisis, officials have no option but to lie, because the imagined idiot population is not yet ready for the truth. In the Chernobyl affair, it is pointless to look for even a scintilla of rationality. God forbid the people should have been told to stay indoors for a week and not go outside unless absolutely necessary. In Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine with a population in the millions, a May Day parade was held just five days after the explosion, for the same propaganda purposes—to pretend that all was well. We know now how these decisions were made. The leaders of the Communist Party, sitting in their offices, wanted foremost to ensure that neither the Soviet people nor—horror of horrors—foreigners should know anything about the atomic disaster. The health of tens of thousands of people was sacrificed in the cause of a grand cover-up that was ridiculous, because the radioactive fallout was so extensive it was registered by laboratories all over the globe.

We suffer appalling conditions, criticize and gripe about the authorities, yet simultaneously manage to take pride in being able to survive in these horrid conditions, and consider it a great competitive advantage in a hypothetical confrontation between nations. Well, yes, we say, the Japanese do make good cars, but just let them try to assemble a functioning car from the spare parts of three others and some rusty scrap metal the way our neighbor Vasily managed to.

You don’t need to be a great psychologist to recognize what is at the root of this: Russians yearn for a normal life, fully aware that we have invented all our existing problems for ourselves. We can’t admit to being fools, though, so we look for something to boast about, where in fact there is nothing to be proud of.",

Osama bin Laden, to whom the Americans had donated money and weapons, was already mutating into their enemy, because the two sides’ aims were diverging. The United States was losing interest and no longer wished to finance jihad. For a religious fanatic, however, those who are not with us are against us. It was in Afghanistan, where they had gone to wage a holy war, that the leaders of the Islamic State like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became who they were. That war is continuing even today.

At that time, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin, working in the Leningrad department of the KGB, was by no means making a fuss about geopolitical disasters but, in pursuit of money and new opportunities, cheerfully leaving the ranks of his organization in order to throw in his lot with the mayor of Leningrad, Anatoly Sobchak, one of Yeltsin’s main supporters. In other words, Putin was unquestionably one of those with a direct interest in the collapse of the U.S.S.R., helping it along and extracting maximum benefit from it. I don’t want to exaggerate Putin’s personal role or assert that he particularly betrayed his organization. He simply acted in his own interests. One day he was out catching dissidents on the streets of Leningrad who would be sent to prison for “anti-Soviet propaganda,” and the next he was the bag carrier of one of the new regime’s most radical supporters.

But Russia didn’t crack it. No one doubts we are living better now than we were in 1990, but, excuse me, thirty years have passed. Even in North Korea people are living better now than they did then. Scientific and technological progress, whole new branches of the economy, communications, the internet, ATMs, computers…Those who claim the rise in living standards relative to the 1990s is due to the exertions and achievements of the Putin regime are like stock joke characters saying, “Thank heaven for Putin! Under his rule the speed of computers has increased a millionfold.” The comparison should not be between us as we were in 1990 and us as we are now, but between how we are now and how we could have been if we had grown at just the average global growth rate. We would easily have achieved what we watched Czechoslovakia, East Germany, China, and South Korea achieve. That is a comparison about which we can only feel sad. This is not some abstract exercise, but thirty years of our lives. And God knows how many more such lost and stolen years lie ahead. For as long as Putin’s group is in power, we will count the missed opportunities and be noticing how other countries have overtaken us in per capita GDP, and how those we have always looked down on as little better than beggars have overtaken us in terms of their national average income. Why hasn’t it worked out? What is it the Poles and Czechs can crack that we can’t? I have a straightforward reply, and while technically it is answering a question by posing other questions, it helps everything fall into place: Has Leszek Balcerowicz, the architect of the Polish reforms, become a multimillionaire like our Anatoly Chubais? Has the family of Václav Havel, the Czech post-Communist leader, bought a $15 million home on the “Millionaires’ Island” of St. Barthélemy, and does he have other assets totaling hundreds of millions? How come in Russia almost all the young democrats, reformers, and free-market champions of the 1990s have become fabulously rich while changing their spots to become conservative pillars of the state? After all, nothing of that sort happened in Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, or Germany. Now that we have tons of autobiographical testimony and interviews and archive documents and, most important, now that we can see with our own eyes the “reformers of the 1990s” transmogrified into Putin’s lickspittles, propagandists, oligarchs, and bureaucrats, and all of them extremely rich, we should be honest, repudiating hypocrisy and any attempt to justify ourselves for our wasted years. We should admit that there never were any democrats in power in Russia, in the sense of people with a genuinely liberal, democratic outlook.

Yeltsin was devoid of genuine ideological motivation and driven only by a lust for power. He was an extremely talented individual, a truly intuitive politician who sensed the popular mood and knew how to exploit it. He was prepared to act decisively and boldly on occasion, but always in the interests of himself and his own power rather than of the people or the nation.

A cool, objective look at the Yeltsin era confronts us with a dismal and disagreeable truth, one that explains Putin’s rise to power: there never were any democrats in government in post-Soviet Russia, let alone freedom-championing liberals who opposed conservatives desperate to resuscitate the U.S.S.R. The whole lot of them—with rare exceptions like Yegor Gaidar and Boris Nemtsov, who showed themselves to be incorruptible and found the strength either to retire (Gaidar) or to resist the reincarnation of authoritarianism (Nemtsov)—were an unholy horde of hypocritical thieves and lowlifes. They were aroused for a time by democratic rhetoric in order, within the framework of the political contest of the time, to be on the same side as the Kremlin, as the authorities. That was the only thing that mattered to them; along with, most important, the opportunities for self-enrichment. The whole bunch of them have always regarded power as a cash cow, and they still do. The feudal allocation of land for sustenance. Power equals money. Power equals opportunities. Power equals a comfortable life for you and your family, and everything you do while in power is aimed at retaining it. That is why all these functionaries were loyal members of the CPSU and never once inclined toward dissidence (none of them, including Yeltsin, who, despite the PR myth, never relinquished his seat in the ruling bureaucracy). Then, still ensconced in their old offices, they gravitated to the ideological niche of “capitalist democrats” and were agreeably surprised to find how much personal property they were allowed to accumulate under the new economic dispensations. “Elections,” “freedom of speech,” and ridiculous “human rights” were by no means an obligatory appendage to their Swiss bank accounts. They drifted toward a new stance as “patriotic conservatives", deploring the collapse of our glorious U.S.S.R.,” an entirely organic, stress-free metamorphosis.

The project was code-named Psycho because, when we first looked at the plans of the site, with all its theaters, golden eagles, and sofas that cost as much as an apartment, our constant refrain was, “This man is sick. He is obsessed with luxury.”

There is an immense amount of computer graphics. Vast diagrams detailing corrupt linkages cannot be omitted, because otherwise our accusations will appear mere hearsay. But these are a turnoff for the average viewer. It is our eternal quandary: how to strike a balance between entertainment and boring journalistic and legal matters.

A short text describing the investigation for YouTube, texts for the social networks, a post on my blog—none of it is ready, and it’s unclear how I’m going to find the time to do it. You can make a good product but then mess everything up by failing to promote it properly. That’s a lesson about new media I learned long ago.

I will not make comments or offer interviews on board, saving all the important stuff for Moscow. Give everything away now and when it really matters there will be nothing left to say. Experienced politicians have a unique ability to repeat the same thing over and over again while giving the impression they are making their revelation for the first time. I have yet to acquire that skill, so I urge all the reporters to let us through to our seats.

obstacles, I am tempted to say, I would like to assure everyone in Israel that everything will work out for me just as well as the situation is working out in the Middle East. I open my mouth to say it, but stop just in time, remembering the golden rule for every politician on planet Earth: If at all possible, do not say anything about Israel and the situation in the Middle East. No matter what you say, someone will be upset, so I say something like, “Hello to everyone watching Israeli television. Everything is going to be fine.

I am most struck by a little female lieutenant. Someone has been needed to formally represent the head of the police station who is demanding my arrest. Evidently nobody was willing to undertake this shameful commission, so she has been sent. A young, shy girl, she is obviously scared initially by what is going on. However, she also provides a textbook opportunity to observe a truly Kafkaesque metamorphosis. At first she is terribly reticent and to all questions responds barely audibly with “As the court shall see fit.” Then, noticing that the court and she are on the same side and that no one is going to scold or laugh at her if she gets something wrong, she begins playing along with the judge and a coarser, more cynical woman representing the Prosecutor’s Office. Registering that we, who are yelling and swearing, demanding things and pointing a finger at the law, are doomed, and indeed enemies, while she is representing the state, she begins to get emotionally drawn into a trial whose lunacy was shortly before scaring her. It’s the herd instinct. Them and us.

Of course, a marriage is work (another widespread cliché, which I also believe). Compromises have to be made. Yulia and I are ordinary people, and we argue and bicker, but deep inside there is always a feeling that this is the person closest to you on earth. You love her, and she loves you; you support her, and she supports you. All the best moments in your life are with her.

I shuddered at the thought that my whole life might be spent helping certain people make an extra couple of million dollars. That was the only way issues could be resolved. Every time you wanted to do something good, you had to do something bad (maybe not for your own benefit, but for someone else’s). Before you know it, you find yourself engaging in corrupt behavior from morning to night. And if you are behaving corruptly for the benefit of someone else, why would it not be okay to do a little bit of the same for yourself? The system soon swallows you.

In the past, politicians had asked rich people for money, oligarchs. By 2011, however, the oligarchs wouldn’t come within cannonball range of me. And neither did I want to owe them any favors. So I put a post on my blog saying, “I know how to work, I know what to do, I will find and hire the necessary number of staff, but the financing has to come from you. Give me money. You need to donate a modest amount to a good, useful project, and that will save me from having to run around trying to cadge funds from oligarchs and businessmen.” These micro-donations were the base that enabled me to become independent. And there was nothing the Kremlin could do about it. It was easy for them to arrest and intimidate one or two big donors, but what could they do against tens of thousands of people.

At the end of every investigation I made an appeal: “Guys, we’ve done our bit. Here’s a great, important story, but without your help no one is going to know about it. Send links to your friends. Join your regional group on VKontakte and leave a comment there too. Send it to your grandmother and your parents.”

There’s a well-known quotation—nowadays everyone loves to quote someone—from the well-known book To Slay the Dragon. “Everyone’s been taught to do bad things, but you, you swine, how did you end up being top of the class at it?”

Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion, but life’s too short to simply stare down at the table. I blinked and I’m almost forty years old. I’ll blink again and I’ll already have grandchildren. And then we all will blink again and we’ll be on our deathbeds, with our relatives all around us, and all they’ll be thinking about is, It’s about time they died and freed up this apartment. And at some point we’ll realize that nothing we did had any meaning at all, so why did we just stare at the table and say nothing? The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters. It’s precisely because of all this that I’m in this rather distressing position. This cunning but distressing plan that the Kremlin has chosen in its battle with me, when they try not only to lock me up but to drag other innocent people into it.

I shall never agree with the system that’s been constructed in our country, because this system is designed to rob everyone who’s in this courtroom right now. Everything’s been set up in such a way that what we have now is a junta. There are twenty people who’ve become billionaires who control everything, from state procurement to the sale of oil. Then there’s a further thousand who are feeding at this junta’s trough. No more than a thousand people, in fact: state deputies and crooks. There’s a small percentage of people who don’t agree with this system. And then there are the millions who are simply staring at the table. I’ll never stop my fight with this junta. I’m going to continue fighting this junta, by campaigning and doing whatever it takes to shake up these people who are staring at the table. You included. I’m never going to stop.

I know one thing for sure: that I’m among the happiest 1 percent of people on the planet—those who absolutely adore their work. I enjoy every single second of it.

The biggest mistake people in the West make about Russia is that they equate the Russian state with the Russian people. In reality, the two have nothing in common, and the greatest misfortune in our country is that out of all the millions who live here, time and again power ends up in the hands of the most cynical and the biggest liars. There’s a popular saying that every nation has the government it deserves, and many people believe that this applies to Russia. Otherwise, surely, our people would have risen up and overthrown the regime. But I don’t believe this is true. A huge number of my fellow citizens don’t agree with what’s going on and didn’t choose it. But if you accept that, nonetheless, personal responsibility lies on the shoulders of each of us, then it lies on my shoulders, too. So it’s up to me to fight even harder to change things. If you were to ask me whether I hate Vladimir Putin, my answer would be, yes, I hate him, but not because he tried to kill me or put my brother in prison. I hate Putin because he has stolen the last twenty years from Russia. These could have been incredible years, the sort of period that we’ve never had in our history. We had no enemies. We had peace on all our borders. The price of oil, gas, and our other natural resources was incredibly high. We earned huge amounts from our exports. Putin could have used these years to turn Russia into a prosperous country. All of us could have lived better. Instead, twenty million people live below the poverty line. Part of the money Putin and his cronies simply stole; part of it was squandered. They did nothing good for our country, and that is their worst crime against our children and the country’s future. I’m afraid that we’ll never again have such a well-fed, peaceful, and happy period, and I cannot but feel regret for this and hatred for those who stole from us the possibility of enjoying it

most important thing about prison is that you should have no control over anything, you should know nothing, and should have not the slightest idea what is going to happen a minute from now

And you could come home to your children and grandchildren and tell them that, yes, you are a genuinely independent judge. And all other judges are absolutely independent too. That would be great. It would be terrific to be a prosecutor who worked within an adversarial system, playing an interesting legal game, defending some, prosecuting others who are real villains. I can’t believe that people enter law school and become prosecutors because they want to join in fabricating criminal cases and forging signatures for somebody. Neither do I believe that people want to become police officers in order to say at the end of the day, “We did a great job of splitting someone’s head open at a rally!” Or, “We escorted this guy who is actually innocent. We’ll be listening to his final words any minute now.” Nobody wants that! Nobody wants to be like that. Policemen want to be normal. Because all this lying has only downsides and no upside. You don’t even get paid better. And for anyone in business—any business in the country is worth half what it should be because there is no judicial system, because there is injustice, because everywhere there is chaos and poverty. Everyone would be much better off if the lying and injustice stopped. It would be far better if those people who want the truth were able to get it. The same goes for FSB officers. Nobody, not a single person in the world, was a schoolboy with shining eyes who said, “I want to be in the FSB and be sent to wash an oppositionist’s underpants because someone smeared poison on them.” Nobody is like that! Nobody wants to do that! They all want to be normal, respected people who catch terrorists, gangsters, and spies, and fight all that.

It is very important not to be fearful of people who are seeking the truth, and perhaps even to find ways of supporting them, directly, indirectly. Perhaps even not supporting them, but at least not contributing to the lie, not contributing to the deceit, not making the world around you a worse place.

So to stand now, in the middle of the day, under a white sky is a first. It is an amazing feeling and, of course, another prompt to think about how people adapt psychologically and how rapidly their pyramid of needs changes.

What they inspect most closely are the books. I noticed this long ago, and it is plainly a legacy of the U.S.S.R. Books are a source of instability and dissidence. In a prison it is conceivable that your jacket will not be adequately examined and a mobile phone will be overlooked. You can be sure, however, that every one of your books will be taken away, listed, examined, stamped “Checked for Extremist Content,” and only then given back to you. Such is the power of the written word.

When corruption is the very foundation of a regime, those who battle it are extremists.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation or something else. Regional headquarters or something else. We are not a name, not a piece of paper, and not an office. We are a group of people who unite and organize those citizens who are against corruption, who are for justice in the courts and equality of all before the law. There are millions of such people. You are such people. For as long as you are there, we are not going away. We will rethink everything. We’ll see what’s what. We’ll change, evolve, adapt. But we will not back down from our aims and ideas. This is our country, and we have no other. Please stay with us. Follow what we’re doing and support us. We’re really going to need your support.

The hero of one of my favorite books, Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, says, “Yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison.”

Everything I say goes on the record. So I started today’s court appearance with a petition: “Esteemed court, I wish officially and for the record to declare that I am against this war [in Ukraine]. I consider it immoral, fratricidal, and criminal. It has been started by the Kremlin gang to make it easier for them to steal. “They are killing so they can thieve.”

It’s not my point here to complain. But I’ve been getting a lot of letters lately from the outside about depression, gloom, and apathy. Seriously? Come on, cheer up. If you’re alive and well and out there, you’re doing all right. Finish your pumpkin latte and go do something to bring Russia closer to freedom.

It has been exactly two years since I returned to Russia. I have spent these two years in prison. When you write a post like this, you have to ask yourself: How many more such anniversary posts will you have to write? Life and the events around us prompt the answer: however many it may take. Our miserable, exhausted motherland needs to be saved. It has been pillaged, wounded, dragged into an aggressive war, and turned into a prison run by the most unscrupulous and deceitful scoundrels. Any opposition to this gang—even if only symbolic in my current limited capacity—is important. I said it two years ago, and I will say it again: Russia is my country. I was born and raised here, my parents are here, and I made a family here; I found someone I loved and had kids with her. I am a full-fledged citizen, and I have the right to unite with like-minded people and be politically active. There are plenty of us, certainly more than corrupt judges, lying propagandists, and Kremlin crooks. I’m not going to surrender my country to them, and I believe that the darkness will eventually yield. But as long as it persists, I will do all I can, try to do what is right, and urge everyone not to abandon hope. Russia will be happy!

On the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, I have summarized my political platform and, hopefully, that of many other decent people: Fifteen theses of a Russian citizen who desires the best for his country. What was all this about, and what are we dealing with now?

1. President Putin has unleashed an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine on ridiculous pretexts. He’s desperately trying to make this a “people’s war,” trying to turn all Russian citizens into his accomplices, but his attempts are failing. There are almost no volunteers for this war, so Putin’s army has to rely on convicts and forcibly mobilized individuals.

2. The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy. He wants to go down in history as “the conqueror tsar” and “the gatherer of Russian lands.”

3. Tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians have been murdered, and pain and suffering have befallen millions more. War crimes have been committed. Ukrainian cities and infrastructure have been destroyed.

4. Russia is suffering a military defeat. It was the realization of this fact that changed the rhetoric of the regime from claims that “Kiev will fall within three days” to hysterical threats of using nuclear weapons should Russia lose. The lives of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been needlessly ruined. The ultimate military defeat may be delayed at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands more mobilized soldiers, but it is inevitable. The combination of aggressive warfare, corruption, inept generals, our weak economy, and the heroism and high motivation of the defending forces can result only in defeat. The Kremlin’s deceitful and hypocritical calls for negotiations and ceasefire are nothing more than a realistic assessment of the prospects of further military action. What’s to be done?

5. What are Ukraine’s borders with Russia? The same as Russia’s with Ukraine, which we internationally recognized and defined in 1991. There’s nothing to discuss here. Almost all borders in the world are more or less accidental and cause someone discontent. But in the twenty-first century, we can’t start wars just to redraw them. Otherwise, the world will sink into chaos.

6. Russia has to leave Ukraine alone and allow it to develop the way its people want. Stop the aggression, end the war, and withdraw all its troops from Ukraine. Continuation of this war is just hysteria caused by powerlessness, and putting an end to it would be a strong move.

7. Together with Ukraine, the United States, the EU, and the UK, we have to look for acceptable ways to compensate for the damage done to Ukraine. One way to achieve this would be lifting the restrictions imposed on our oil and gas, but directing part of the income Russia receives from hydrocarbon exports toward reparations. This should only be done after a change of power in Russia and the end of the war.

8. War crimes committed during this war have to be investigated in cooperation with international institutions. Why would stopping Putin’s aggression benefit Russia?

9. Are all Russians inherently imperialistic? That’s nonsense. For example, Belarus is also involved in the war against Ukraine. Does this mean that the Belarusians also have an imperial mindset? No, they merely also have a dictator in power. There will always be people with imperial views in Russia, as in any other country with historical prerequisites for this, but they are far from the majority. There’s no reason to weep and wail about it. Such people should be defeated in elections, just as both right-wing and left-wing radicals get defeated in developed countries.

10. Does Russia need new territories? Russia is a vast country with a shrinking population and rural areas dying out. Imperialism and the urge to seize territory is the most harmful and destructive path. Once again, the Russian government is destroying our future with its own hands simply in order to make our country look bigger on the map. But Russia is big enough as it is. Our objective should be preserving our people and developing what we have in abundance.

11. For Russia, the legacy of this war will be a whole tangle of complex and, at first glance, almost unsolvable problems. It’s important to establish for ourselves that we want to solve them and then begin to do so honestly and openly. The key to success lies in understanding that ending the war as soon as possible will not only be good for Russia and its people but also very profitable: this is the only way to start progressing toward removal of sanctions, the return of those who left, restoration of business confidence, and economic growth.

12. After the war we will have to reimburse Ukraine for all the damage caused by Putin’s aggression. However, the restoration of normal economic relations with the civilized world and the return of economic growth will allow us to do so without interfering with the development of our country. We’ve hit rock bottom, and in order to resurface, we need to bounce back from it. This would be morally correct, rational, and profitable.

13. We need to dismantle the Putin regime and its dictatorship, ideally through conducting free general elections and convoking a Constitutional Assembly.

14. We need to establish a parliamentary republic based on the alternation of power through fair elections, independent courts, federalism, local self-governance, complete economic freedom, and social justice.

15. Recognizing our history and traditions, we need to be part of Europe and follow the European path of development. We have no other choice, nor do we need any.

Well, after our meeting the psychologist said, “This is the sixteenth time we’ve put you in the SHIZO, but you keep cracking jokes, and your mood is much better than that of the commission members.” That’s true, but on the morning of your birthday you have to be honest with yourself, so I ask myself the question, Am I really in a good mood, or do I force myself to feel that way? My answer is, I really am. Let’s face it, of course I wish I didn’t have to wake up in this hellhole and could instead have breakfast with my family, receive kisses on the cheek from my children, unwrap presents, and say, “Wow, this is exactly what I dreamed of!” But life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. And the day will come when speaking the truth and advocating for justice will be commonplace and not dangerous in Russia. But until that day comes, I see my situation not as a heavy burden or a yoke but as a job that needs to be done. Every job has its unpleasant aspects, right? So I’m going through the unpleasant part of my favorite job right now. My plan for the previous year was not to become brutalized and bitter and lose my laid-back demeanor; that would mean the beginning of my defeat. And all my success in this was only possible because of your support. As always, on my birthday, I want to thank all the people I’ve met in my life. The good ones for having helped and still helping me. The bad ones for the fact that my experience with them has taught me something. Thanks to my family for always being there for me! But the biggest thank-you and biggest salute I want to give today goes to all political prisoners in Russia, Belarus, and other countries. Most of them have it much harder than me. I think about them all the time. Their resilience inspires me every day.

And now they’re trying me in a closed trial in a maximum-security penal colony. In a sense, this is the new sincerity. They now say openly, We are afraid of you. We are afraid of what you will say. We are afraid of the truth. This is an important confession. And it makes practical sense for all of us. We must do what they fear—tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.

I have been trying to go to the dentist for a year and a half. At the new trial, I told both the judge and the prison officials, “Let’s solve this issue humanely, quit leaving me hanging, I just need to see a dentist.” The representatives of the camp surprised me, by saying, “You have already collected so many permissions on so many documents, you just need to write one more application and everything will be fine.” Well, okay. I said to my lawyers, “Please write me a statement, and I’ll give it to them.” (The statement is large, with lots of attachments, you can’t just write it yourself.) I then wait for a while and…nothing. I asked the prison guards where my application for a medical appointment was. “It was withdrawn by the censors as containing evidence of a crime.” They look at you with such attentive, shining eyes, like a meerkat in all those wildlife TV programs. Let’s see how he is gonna react. Will he yell? Will he be desperate? Will he complain? Will he accept it and start being submissive? Every single day they come up with some bullshit like this to piss off the rebellious prisoner and test his strength. One hundred percent of the letters coming from my lawyers are withdrawn by the censors as “criminal,” so I can’t receive a single legal document. I’ve been working on my inner Zen for three years now to just shrug my shoulders in response to all this. In general, I can say that I have already made good progress along this path, but I am still far from perfection. Otherwise, I would not be dragged periodically around the prison with my hands twisted behind my back. But after all, every person should have a psychological release valve.

Exactly three years ago, I came back to Russia after treatment following my poisoning. I was arrested at the airport. And for three years, I’ve been in prison. And for three years, I’ve been answering the same question. Prisoners ask it simply and directly. Prison officials inquire about it cautiously, with the recording devices turned off. “Why did you come back?”

They seem to believe, If you came back, there must have been some deal you made. It just didn’t work out. Or hasn’t yet. There’s a hidden plan involving the Kremlin towers. There must be a secret lurking beneath the surface. Because in politics, nothing is as straightforward as it appears. But there are no secrets or twisted meanings. Everything really is that simple. I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary. And if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles; they’re only thoughts in your head. Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s not currently in prison lacks convictions. Everyone pays their price. For many people, the price is high even without being imprisoned. I took part in elections and vied for leadership positions. The call for me is different. I traveled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, “I promise that I won’t let you down, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t abandon you.” By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them. It turned out that in Russia, to defend the right to have and not to hide your beliefs, you have to pay by sitting in a solitary cell. Of course, I don’t like being there. But I will not give up either my ideas or my homeland. My convictions are not exotic, sectarian, or radical. On the contrary, everything I believe in is based on science and historical experience. Those in power should change. The best way to elect leaders is through honest and free elections. Everyone needs a fair legal system. Corruption destroys the state. There should be no censorship. The future lies in these principles. But for the present, sectarians and marginals are in power. They have absolutely no ideas. Their only goal is to cling to power. Total hypocrisy allows them to wrap themselves in any cover. So polygamists have become conservatives. Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have become Orthodox. Owners of “golden passports” and offshore accounts are aggressive patriots. Lies, and nothing but lies. It will crumble and collapse. The Putinist state is not sustainable. One day, we will look at it, and it won’t be there. Victory is inevitable. But for now, we must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs.

Here are the techniques I worked out. Perhaps others may find them helpful in the future (but let’s hope they are not needed).

The first is frequently to be found in self-help books: Imagine the worst thing that can happen, and accept it. This works, even if it’s a masochistic exercise. I can imagine that it’s not suitable for people suffering from clinical depression. They might do it so successfully they end up hanging themselves.

It’s a fairly easy exercise because it involves a skill everyone developed in childhood. You may remember crying your eyes out in your bed and exultantly imagining you are going to die right then and there just to spite everyone. Imagine the look on the faces of your parents! How they will cry when it finally dawns on them who they have lost! Choked with tears, they’ll beg you as you lie quiet and still in your little coffin to get up and come and watch TV, not just until ten o’clock but until eleven, if only you would be alive. But it is too late, you are dead, which means you are unrelenting and deaf to their pleas. Well, mine is much the same idea. Get into your prison bunk and wait to hear “Lights out.” The lights are switched off. You invite yourself to imagine, as realistically as possible, the worst thing that could happen. And then, as I said, accept it (skipping the stages of denial, anger, and bargaining).

I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to. Or while I am still in prison, people I know outside will die and I won’t be able to say goodbye to them. I will miss graduations from school and college. Tasseled mortarboards will be tossed in the air in my absence. All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren. I won’t be the subject of any family stories. I’ll be missing from all the photos.

You need to think about this seriously, and your cruel imagination will whisk you through your fears so swiftly that you will arrive at your “eyes filled with tears” destination in next to no time. The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge, but to move instantly to acceptance.