Navalny's prison pen pal reveals how he stayed sane in arctic 'Polar Wolf' jail

Alexei Navalny kept his sanity in Russian jail by making jokes and 'mocking the border guards', according to a survivor of the same gulag. 

Four decades ago, Soviet dissident and Israeli former minister Natan Sharansky, 76, endured nine years in the same bone-chilling Arctic facility where Navalny died.

Though they never met, the inter-generational activists formed a historic friendship revealed through deeply personal letters they exchanged in 2023. 

They bonded over a shared sense of humor and how little the Russian prison system has changed since Sharansky was an inmate - which is detailed in his memoir, Fear No Evil. 

Navalny, 47, said it was Sharansky's book which gave him 'hope' for the future of Russia in his final year behind bars in the IK-3 colony around 155 miles east of Moscow.

Speaking with DailyMail.com in the wake of his death, Sharanksy hailed Navalny as a 'hero' and revealed the methods they each used to stay sane amid horrific conditions. 

Alexei Navalny (pictured) kept his sanity in Russian jail by making jokes and 'mocking the border guards', according to a survivor of the same gulag and his friend Natan Sharansky, 76

It was most recently reported that Navalny died of 'sudden death syndrome', but no details were given to back this claim up

Sharansky was a chess prodigy as a child, and he said playing the board game in his mind was what helped him through 100 days of near-starvation and solitary confinement in the 1980s.  

Meanwhile, enduring the same torture methods 40 years later, Navalny coped by 'mocking the border guards' employed to enforce the Orwellian system. 

'I was in a small room, like six square meters, very cold, they take away all the warm clothes,' Sharansky told DailyMail.com on Thursday. 

'Three pieces of bread, three cups of water a day, nobody to talk to, nothing to write or read, no bed, no normal table.

'You have to remind yourself through all this why you’re there and to find the way to feel very deeply that you are in the middle of the struggle, to continue saying no to KGB and not to give up to this pressure which you experience every moment. 

'In my case I also played a lot of chess in my head, in Navalny's case I think he was spending a lot of time joking (and) mocking the border guards. 

'But you really have to find a way to both be very serious and feel yourself in the center of the struggle, and to laugh at the system, to dismiss it - to overcome it. 

'You become physically weaker and weaker, you are losing weight, but it’s important not to lose your moral integrity. 

'It’s surprising how similar our experiences were… that’s why it was very easy for us (to become friends) without knowing one another before.'

Sharansky praised Navalny for 'keeping his six meters of freedom against all the odds' in his cell, and condemned his murder as 'an awful, cynical killing of a real hero'. 

The two activists were strangers when Navalny began their correspondence - penning his first letter to Sharansky from IK-3. 

'Navalny wrote to me in his letter that "your book makes me feel very optimistic because one regime already fell",' Sharansky added.

'He knew that they could kill him, but this regime is doomed, and that’s what gave him optimism. 

'And it was the same with me - we knew the (Soviet) regime was doomed. I didn’t know if I would get out alive - but I knew the regime was doomed.’

Four decades ago, Soviet dissident and Israeli former minister Natan Sharansky, 76, endured nine years in the same bone-chilling Arctic facility where Navalny died

Civil rights activist, USSR Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky (with fur cap) and US embassador Richard Burt after his release to West Germany at the Glienicker Bridge that connects (East German) Potsdam and (West) Berlin

Canadians protesting in support of Sharansky on his 35th birthday on the 115th day of his hunger strike in a Soviet prison

‘You decide that your freedom doesn’t belong to them, it only belongs to me,' he added. 'By saying no to KGB you are part of this historical struggle against this regime… the struggle continues.'

Sharansky named former Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza and Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin as two prominent activists carrying the torch from Navalny. 

He added that 'more and more ordinary people inside Russia' are also growing uncomfortable with the increasingly authoritarian stranglehold Putin wields over them.

'The more uncomfortable people feel, the more they resist, and the more efforts the regime has to spend to keep them under control,' he said. 'It will fall.'

Sharansky said there are several networks inside and outside of Russia keeping up the fight against Putin - including those writing letters to prisoners inside the gulags. 

Crowdfunding efforts to support political prisoners have also gathered hundreds of thousands of dollars, including one telethon organized by several independent media outlets last summer which raised $34.5 million rubles ($415,000).

Born in Donestk, eastern Ukraine, Sharansky was jailed in the former Soviet Union in 1977 while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. 

He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in the Siberian prison where Navalny died on February 16, 2024. 

Sharansky became the first political detainee released by former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev through a prisoner swap in 1986, following an international campaign for his freedom led by his wife, Avital.

He wrote a book called Fear No Evil, which Navalny, 47, read in prison and said it gave him 'hope' for Russia's future. Sharansky went on to pursue a decades-long career in politics, rising to the level of Israel's deputy prime minister in 2001.