In 1986, I read an article in a think-tank booklet about Anatoly Marchenko, who'd recently died. He was only in his late 40s but died of broken health because he'd spent most of his adult life in harsh Soviet prisons, probably similar to the one where Navalny died this year.

When I got to the line in the article that said he'd died a free man, it hit me like a bullet. In Soviet Russia, people learn early in life to speak guardedly, not to say what they really think. It's verboten. But Marchenko did.