A full year after late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s memoir Patriot was published in 26 languages, a debate has flared up online over a key difference between editions. The Russian version omits Navalny’s social media posts from prison — including messages expressing his anti-war views — while the English edition includes them. Although the discrepancy has been known since publication, it has only recently drawn widespread attention, sparking a heated debate over how books are curated for different audiences and who gets to shape Navalny’s legacy. Here’s what we know.

How the controversy began

Andrey Volna, a trauma surgeon who left Russia over his anti-war stance and now helps war victims, noticed that unlike the English-language edition, the Russian version of Alexey Navalny’s memoir Patriot contains none of the late opposition leader’s social media posts.

Patriot was released in October 2024 in 26 languages. The book combines Navalny’s autobiography — which he began writing after surviving a poisoning in 2020 — with his prison diaries, kept after his return to Russia and subsequent imprisonment. The entries end in September 2022. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has said he was increasingly denied access to pen and paper in prison, and that some of his writings may have been lost after his death in February 2024.

When the English edition of Patriot came out, it was no secret that it included not just the memoirs but also Navalny’s social media posts from prison. Writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar noted this difference in his review for Meduza: “The English edition, by the way, also includes his Instagram posts. I hope future Russian editions will add them too — that context is important for future generations.”

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At the time, few paid much attention to the discrepancy. But months later, Andrey Volna revived the discussion, arguing that the Russian edition should also include Navalny’s social media posts — particularly as they showed his position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Was it really not possible to include his clearly anti-war, and in some ways pro-Ukrainian [posts written after the fall of 2022]?” Volna asked. “Especially his post from February 20, 2023, with 15 points for ending the war — they sound even more radical than Ukraine’s current demands. Yes, questions of national identity were never Alexey’s strong suit, and he said plenty of things he shouldn’t have. But his strength was that he evolved, that he tried to correct his mistakes.”

Political analyst Sergey Medvedev agreed, noting that Navalny’s later posts “marked a real evolution in his thinking about Russia and the world,” and that his 15 points for ending the war “fully aligned with Ukraine’s position, even going further in some ways.”

Medvedev blamed the omission on the Navalny-founded Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), saying the group “isn’t preserving Navalny’s legacy so much as manipulating it for its own murky political ends.” Cultural historian Alexander Etkind echoed this: “It doesn’t change my view of Navalny,” he said, “but sadly, it confirms my worst fears about his heirs.”

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The FBK rejected claims that the group had anything to do with what was included — or omitted — from Patriot. The foundation said it played no role in the book’s publication and that editorial decisions were made by separate teams working on the Russian and English editions.

“Editors of the English edition decided to add [posts] they thought were necessary for understanding the context,” wrote FBK chairwoman Maria Pevchikh. “Editors of the Russian edition decided not to include them […] since the book consists of prison diaries — not a collection of every text Navalny ever wrote.”

Leonid Volkov, another longtime Navalny ally, responded to Sergey Medvedev’s claim that Navalny had changed his views on the war in Ukraine. “Medvedev implies that Navalny initially supported the war and then ‘reconsidered,’” Volkov wrote. “Navalny — who turned his courtroom speech [from prison on the first day of the full-scale invasion] into a fiery anti-war statement…”

Volkov suggested that Medvedev and others sharing Andrey Volna’s criticism were taking part in what he called “yet another attack” on the Navalny family and the FBK, allegedly orchestrated by exiled former oligarch–turned–opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “Apparently, [Medvedev] is working for Khodorkovsky as one of his political strategists,” Volkov wrote.

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Even before anyone from the FBK spoke out, Varvara Babitskaya — the editor of the Russian-language edition of Patriot — addressed the controversy herself. She said the absence of Navalny’s social media posts was purely an editorial decision.

“A personal diary is one thing, and an Instagram post is another — they’re different genres,” she explained.

English-language readers can’t read the original Russian posts, so they were included there. […] But that wasn’t my responsibility — I worked on the Russian text. The book consists of previously unpublished material. Navalny’s readers have already seen his posts, and they’re still publicly available. […] Navalny thought his book through very carefully. It’s not a dumping ground for all his texts. We tried to stay true to the author’s intent.

Babitskaya added that she discussed her editorial choices with Navalny’s widow Yulia, and that they spent a long time thinking about what kind of book Navalny himself would have wanted to publish. “We worked together on the structure and other elements,” she said.

I can take all the blame — I stand by my work. But there was nothing politically motivated about it. It didn’t make a difference to me what Navalny’s posts were about; I only thought about how they didn’t fit with the deeply personal diaries of a dying man — and about the fact that those posts were already published and widely known.

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Literary critic Anna Narinskaya pointed out that it’s common for different language editions of the same book to vary. Writer and feminist activist Daria Serenko added that editors of the English edition of one of her own books once asked her to include “some additional material — like Instagram posts or diary entries from that period,” explaining that “our readers need more context.”

Tikhon Dzyadko, editor-in-chief of the independent television channel Dozhd (TV Rain), said he didn’t believe the omission of Navalny’s anti-war posts from the Russian edition was part of “some secret or devious plan.” “Navalny’s posts on other topics weren’t included either — nor, for example, were his interviews from prison,” Dzyadko said. “After all, why should they have been?”

Not everyone agreed. Yevgenia Albats, editor-in-chief of The New Times, called the decision to exclude Navalny’s posts — whatever the reason — a mistake.

“I’m stunned that his posts weren’t included in the Russian edition,” she wrote.

Who had the right to decide for him what should appear in his posthumous book and what shouldn’t? Especially as these weren’t private reflections — they were his political stance, his political testament. How could anyone deny Russian readers — the very people he gave his life for — the messages he wrote to them?

Yulia Navalnaya has not commented publicly on the debate surrounding Patriot.

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