<p><pre><code> I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life—either for the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime.
Regimes like this one are resilient, and the most foolish thing I could do is pay attention to people who say, “Lyosha, sure, the regime is going to last at least another year, but the year after that, two at most, it will fall apart and you will be a free man.” And everything along those lines. People write that to me frequently.
The U.S.S.R. lasted seventy years. The repressive regimes in North Korea and Cuba survive to this day. China, with a whole bunch of political prisoners, has lasted so long that those prisoners grow old and die in prison. The Chinese regime does not relent. It releases no one, despite all the international pressure. The truth of the matter is that we underestimate just how resilient autocracies are in the modern world. With very, very rare exceptions, they are protected from external invasion by the U.N., by international law, by the rights of sovereignty. Russia, which right now is waging a classic war of aggression against Ukraine (which has increased tenfold the predictions of the regime’s imminent collapse), is additionally protected by its membership in the U.N. Security Council and its nuclear weapons.</code></pre>
It’s remarkable what people will do in the name of principle. Walk into police batons. Accept a death in prison. Raid Harper’s Ferry and see your sons perish. Stand in front of an advancing tank. Most of us haven’t, most of us won’t. What makes those people so intransigent? Is it their circumstances? Are they doing what any honest person would do, or are they driven further, by something else?