Even after his death, Alexei Navalny did not give up the fight against corruption in Russia

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Fight back.

By the time Navalny died last February in a Russian penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, he had been a powerful opposition force in Russia for more than a decade.

During those years, Navalny chronicled government corruption on his blog and YouTube channel, ran for mayor of Moscow and tried to challenge Putin for the presidency in 2018.

He wasn’t allowed to participate, but as he told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl in 2017… he wasn’t intimidated by the Russian government.

“These are people trying to steal my country, and I strongly disagree. I’m not going to be some kind of speechless person right now. I’m not going to be silent.”

In 2020, Navalny collapsed during a flight over Siberia, a moment captured in the documentary.

It is believed that Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novachok. he recovered from the attack in Germany and was arrested almost immediately upon his return to Moscow.

In Navalny’s final moments, Alexei gives a serious answer to the director’s question about the risk he took.

“My message for the situation in which I am murdered is very simple: don’t give up.”

A look at his memoirs.

In his posthumous memoirs Patriotwrote Navalny – “When they finally slap me, the book will be my memorial.”

Although his voice fades, his wife Yulia Navalnaya shares his message. She now leads the movement her husband launched that fights against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.

She spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about her husband’s book and legacy. For Navalnaya, it’s a look at the whole thing; including his unwavering sense of positivity.

“I think it was kind of his superpower,” Navalnaya told Shapiro. “That’s why he was so popular. That’s why people love him. That’s why he had so many supporters. On the one hand, he was the leader of the Russian opposition. He was a serious politician.”

But as he shares in the book, Navalny also wanted to be the average neighbor.

“He was really funny. It’s not about the book. It’s about his whole life. I spent more than 25 years with him, and all the time he was very funny and very easy-going. And he laughed a lot during the whole time .” difficult moments in our lives. And it helped him a lot and gave him a lot of strength.”

Listen to the full interview to discover what Navalnaya learned from his writing about her late husband, and her reflections after losing him.

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