An Appeal to the Electorate, to All Russian Citizens

Statement by Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Released by his lawyers
August 31, 2005

Dear Friends!

I am very grateful to all regions, all voters and all Russian citizens who have voiced their readiness to nominate me for the State Duma and for regional parliaments. I am especially grateful to Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions, to which I am bound by long years of cooperation. Everyone who was not afraid to show support for prisoner Khodorkovsky today has demonstrated that civic courage and true human dignity have not disappeared from Russia's regions despite speculations of cynical and well-fed Kremlin mouthpieces. I know this from the thousands of letters I receive. Now I have seen another clear-cut proof of this. This is why I am really happy. Your position helps me carry on living and fighting in a prison cell.

Support of several Russian regions is a great honor for me. However I have decided to run for a seat in the State Duma in Moscow, in the Universitetsky constituency No 201 of the capital. Because I am struggling not for access to the deputies' canteen or an office at Okhotnyy Ryad [where State Duma is located], but for the right of every Russian citizen to say out loud that the present Kremlin regime is a spent force and its days are numbered. The disintegrating and decomposing Putinism must be replaced by a new generation of leaders who are concerned not with securing a disgraceful spot at the government trough, but with Russia's destiny in the third millennium.

Waging our common struggle, I am counting on the live energy, talent and courage of the Russian regions. However, for my words to be really heard throughout Russia and the world, I need to run in the election in Moscow. I am sure that all those who feel sympathy with me will understand me.

I promise that, as soon as I am released from prison, my first trips will be to Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Ulyanovsk. Brothers and sisters, thank you for everything. We are marching towards victory together and we shall win.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention centre