Interview (8.4.2005)
"I am sure the sentence will be reversed."
Vedomosti Daily
August 4, 2005
Mikhail Khodorkovsky is, for now, in Matrosskaya Tishina jail awaiting the ruling on his appeal against the nine-year sentence delivered on May 31 by the Meshchansky Court of Moscow.
Q: Did you expect such a sentence? Do you think it will be commuted? Are you going to ask for the President's pardon?
A: I was told as early as the middle of April that I would be given the maximum sentence. Of course, hope dies last, but I think I was less optimistic about the outcome than all my relatives, friends and colleagues. I am sure that the sentence will no only be commuted, but I think it will also be reversed by the Supreme Court of Russia -- in about 3-4 years time. Until then, I'll be inside if I have to.
Q: Can you comment on the course of the trial, the action of all the parties, including the judges?
A: No comment on the performance of the Prosecutor General's Office. I think they are ashamed to go into a trial with the kind of case that they have put together. It's another question that the prosecutors knew that the decision would be taken at the Kremlin and that proof was irrelevant. As for the judge, Irina Kolesnikova, she is to be pitied because she had her hand forced.
What could you expect from her? Being a lawyer she understands that she had to act as she did out of fear of her superiors. And believe me, to live with such a burden on one's conscience is worse than being in jail.
Q: What is the lesson of the YUKOS case for the owners and heads of other major Russian companies?
A: I think there are two lessons.
First: You shouldn't imagine that money is a magic wand that enables you to solve any problem. Money is just one element of comfort, but no more.
Second: If you want to be treated in accordance with the law and justice, you should build a state in which justice and law prevail and form a corresponding social environment. Don't count on some exceptional treatment - make the rules, follow them and uphold them.
Q: Do you think a similar fate may be in store for other oligarchs? How should they act to avoid it?
A: I don't think the Kremlin is going to make short shrift of other big businessmen. For Putin the YUKOS case is enough, and for the people around him Yuganskneftegaz and other assets of the looted company are enough. The government doesn't have enough clout, or energy, or confidence to attack another national corporation. The Kremlin itself now says that the application of the law to the YUKOS case is highly selective and it offers business something like a non- aggression pact, but as far as I can see it from my cell, mutual trust between the state and the entrepreneurs is no longer there.
And no pacts can be of any avail until there is a change of power and big business takes several decisive steps to meet society, in particular, initiates legitimization of privatization.
Until privatization is legitimized, the fight for possession of big chunks of property in our country will continue. Taking part in that fight will be semi-privatized law courts, the security bodies and the prosecutor's office. And I wouldn't be too sure that in the near future none of the so-called oligarchs -- big or not so big -- will not be jailed or killed. The Kremlin is not the only player. He who is happy with the current rules of the game will have to follow them and can at any time become a victim. It's impossible to get an "individual" guarantee.
Q: Some readers of Vedomosti think that the YUKOS case was good for the country's economy in that big business is abandoning minimization of taxes and the oligarchs no longer think that they are running the country. Do you agree with this?
A: As for me, personally, I gave up minimization of my own taxes long before the YUKOS case. I have never thought of myself as running this country. I am convinced that government should be separated from business, which doesn't mean that business has no right to defend its political interests. It means that business shouldn't rule the country, but neither should the government engage in business. However, today we see that executive power bodies are motivated by private business interests just as much as in the 1990s. The YUKOS case made no difference. If anything, cynicism has increased, as it became evident that present-day Russian capitalism is based on brute force. Whatever you might say, I am not aware of any positive consequences for society of what has been done to YUKOS and to me personally.
Q: Did you count on the support of society or some of its strata? To what extent have these expectations come true?
A: I was aware that a wealthy man of Jewish origin could not be too popular in Russia. And I am amazed to see how many ordinary people in various regions of Russia have supported me. Teachers, doctors, workers, students, pensioners. During the year and a half that I have been in Matrosskaya Tishina, I have received a lot of letters of solidarity and support. Many people who until recently thought of themselves as my ideological adversaries -- including in the camp of the CPRF and Motherland -- have recently, at the most difficult time for me, joined the camp of my allies and entered into a substantive dialogue with me. The liberal circles and the intelligentsia have consistently supported me, for which I am grateful to them and forever will be.
Only 5-7 professional liberals turned their backs on me. They were the ones who two years ago sounded off in various society gatherings that "the year 1937 is coming" and then, on a signal from the Kremlin, made a U-turn and started arguing in a very profound way that a 9 year sentence would do me a lot of good. But I am not interested in these people. I am not, of course, speaking about paid-for provocateurs on television. Everyone who wants to be a villain in public, can do so thanks to the Kremlin-controlled media.
It is far more difficult -- and dignified and correct -- to cultivate the human side of you and to oppose a superior force. "And in my cruel age I praised freedom and pleaded for mercy for the downtrodden." This is an article of faith of a Russian intellectual.
You can't put it better than Alexander Sergeyevich [Pushkin] did.
Q: Do you agree with Leonid Nevzlin that Roman Abramovich should take much of the blame for the savaging of YUKOS?
A: I don't. Most probably, Leonid was reacting on an impulse.
Roma Abramovich is not a St. Peter, to put it mildly. But the organizer and driving force behind the YUKOS case was Igor Sechin, one of his rivals in the scramble for influence on Putin. The row over YUKOS marred Roman's reputation in the West, and this is the most important thing for him now. Surely, Abramovich did nothing to help me and my partners, but then, of course, he is Putin's friend, not mine. We shouldn't have counted on him.
Q: Deputy head of the president's staff Vladislav Surkov said recently that the YUKOS case was not a political one and was not about redistributing property, that it was the result of a "sum of factors." Was he really trying to convince you that "power, like love, could not be bought"?
A: I agree with much of what Slava Surkov says. For instance, that the opinion of 140 million ordinary Russian citizens should be decisive in determining state policy. Although the Kremlin by no means always takes it into account today I am glad that Slava, unlike myself, has still not been jailed. I hope he won't be jailed in the future. And I agree with the bit about the "sum of factors." One of these, called YUKOS, cost $40 billion, but now it costs nothing and is encumbered with debts. You can't buy people's affection, but you can earn it. Not everyone succeeds in doing it.
Q: What are your personal hopes for the future?
A: First, I pin my hopes on my social activities, which I will continue wiith my funds in support of Russian poetry and philosophy and the alliance in aid of Russian prisoners. I am absolutely free in this work from any external commitments and this is what fills me with optimism. I know now that you can feel free even if you are in jail.
Secondly, I link my hopes with the generations who will, in several years' time, break through the gray ranks of bureaucratic mediocrity to take power in Russia. Then all of us will be released from a "prison."