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NTV JOURNALISTS COMMENTS AND TV INTERVIEW WITH NATIONAL STRATEGY INSTITUTE PRESIDENT STANISLAV BELKOVSKY ON VLADIMIR PUTIN AND MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY
[STRANA I MIR NTV PROGRAM, 22:00, MARCH 30, 2004]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)

Anchor 1: Good evening. I am Aset Vatsuyeva

Anchor 2: I am Alexei Pivovarov.

Anchor 1: This is the program called The Country and the World. We will talk about the main developments of Tuesday, March 30.

Anchor 2: Today Mikhail Khodorkovsky received the first responses to his policy letter from Lefortovo. Having published his manifesto, Khodorkovsky sent a challenge though not to Putin as many expected, but to his own past and to himself. "The richest man in Russia said that he is rejecting his previous role," writes Stanislav Belkovsky in his article. It is thought that the Yukos case began with one of his past articles on the threat of an oligarchical coup d'etat in Russia.

Anchor 1: This is something new -- is the tone of most comments today and the Ministry of Justice generally doubts Khodorkovsky's authorship. "He did not send any article from his prison," Deputy Minister Yuri Kalinin said. Khodorkovsky manifesto on the "Crisis of liberalism in Russia" has been published the day before in the newspaper Vedomosti.

The unusually lengthy and passionate discussion of the businessman's letter was observed the whole day by our analyst Pavel Lobkov. Pavel, good evening.

Lobkov: Good evening.

Anchor 1: There is the sensation that nobody expected anything like this to come from Khodorkovsky.

Lobkov: Well, even the most experienced and seasoned politicians had this sensation. Arkady Volsky who heads the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, yesterday said that he did not expect Khodorkovsky to appeal to big business to share wealth. And today he is already prepared to approve every word in that article. Using a prison term, the ex-head of Yukos "surrendered" all oligarchs, the entire oligarchy and put on himself and on his colleagues the responsibility for the corruption, the arbitrariness of bureaucracy and even for the fact that the holders of the vouchers did not get a promised Volga car each. For a whole day the staff of the newspaper Vedomosti were trying to persuade the public that the article was genuine, not ordered by some pro-Kremlin public relations service although for the Kremlin now, speaking as Lenin would, this is a very needed and timely article recommended for reading in the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye estates.

Bukharin: "I offer you my apologies although I have been so punished that darkness descended on my eyes. Iosif Vissarionovich, you have lost in me one of the most capable generals of yours." (Nikolai Bukharin writing to Stalin from prison)

Khodorkovsky: "Putin is not a liberal and not a democrat. And still he is more liberal and more democratic than 70 percent of the population of the country. The history of the country dictates: bad authorities are better than no authorities at all." (Mikhail Khodorkovsky from the Lefortovo prison)

Lobkov: He is appealing from the chasm not to the losers -- Khakamada and Yavlinsky, he is not asking oligarch colleagues to grieve with their heart: for a long time they have been returning to Russia the eggs that she has lost. The repentant letter has a different address.

Putin: "The law should be followed all the time not only when they take you firmly 'by one place.'"

Lobkov: I will paraphrase Yeltsin: Forgive me, your oligarch. At the beginning it was hard to believe whether it was a plagiarism or cunning counterpropaganda.

Drel: "Today Mikhail Borisovich, having familiarized himself with press reports reaching him and expressing different opinions and doubting his authorship, asked me to tell you that this is indeed his article."

Lobkov: The liberals who lost the elections, cannot reconcile themselves to this. Pressure was applied to the author. Just imagine a thing like that coming from Khodorkovsky!

Khodorkovsky: "It is necessary to force big business to share wealth with the people, to agree to reform the taxation of mineral resources." (Mikhail Khodorkovsky)

Volsky: "One of the oligarchs said: 'Well, Arkady Ivanovich, if you languished behind bars for half a year you would also produce such an article.' I would write it even without staying in prison that long. It is because it is written correctly. There are seven points in the letter and they refer to the social responsibility of business. Where shall we go?"

Lobkov: If this were written by deputy Yudin or political scientist Belkovsky, whose article started the hunting of Yukos. Now the persecutor of the oligarchs is triumphant.

Belkovsky: "The citizen of the Russian Federation made it clear that he is capable of public repentance -- this is the sign of strength, not of weakness."

Lobkov: It was believed that after that Khodorkovsky should have been let go, signing the promise to be available. It was believed that the President was rancorous but not blood-thirsty. And when he comes to power a second time, he will not be alien to showing mercy for the fallen. It turned out that it was all wrong. After the elections, again the historical Basmanny Court decided to extend the term in detention. This is to say that on the part of the authorities there was no sign of reconciliation. And it turns out that by this article Khodorkovsky gives the signal himself.

Khodorkovsky: "The hour of atonement has struck, it is to stop lying to oneself and to society. So, it should be decided that we are already sufficiently grown up and strong in order to speak the truth." (Mikhail Khodorkovsky)

Lobkov: Switzerland freezes the deposits of Yukos shareholders, Nevzlin and Brudno are wanted and they are snarling at the Prosecutor General's Office from abroad. Now Khodorkovsky is responding also for all his brothers who have gone astray in sin. People in jail often turn religious. And there in the article by former oligarch the spirit of freedom is personified by Jesus Christ while Putin curbs the Russian national devils. The President, as is known, is not alien to religiousness. He only has to believe that Saul has turned into St Paul. And he could also say: "You are repenting but not sincerely." And then add: Where is the money?

And then inmate number one will lose old friends and he will not find new ones. His sworn friend, political scientist Belkovsky has already given it the name of his review about the prison confessions called "Loneliness of Khodorkovsky."

Pavel Lobkov, NTV TV company.

Anchor 2: The author of the article called Loneliness of Khodorkovsky and as it seemed until today one of the main persecutors of Yukos, Stanislav Belkovsky is now in our studio. Stanislav Alexandrovich, good evening.

Belkovsky: Good evening.

Anchor 2: Do you think that this article by Khodorkovsky will somehow influence his fate?

Belkovsky: I don't know whether it will influence his fate within the meaning you are asking me, that is whether he will be released from jail. I don't think there is some cause and effect relationship here and it should not be constructed. But without a doubt it will influence his fate as an ideologist of the new Russian elite. And I believe that this article, if it is not a manifesto of the new Russian elite, then at least it is a claim to being a manifesto or a rough copy of such a manifesto.

Anchor 1: Your article ends with the words: "Mikhail Borisovich, I did not appreciate you enough because I did not know you. Excuse me." What are you apologizing for and why?

Belkovsky: I naturally apologize not for those ideological structures, not for my ideology which I stick to over many years and in no way do I disavow all I said and wrote last year. I beg for Khodorkovsky's apology for my personal attack on him which, it seems to me, was dictated by insufficiently deep understanding of that personality by me.

Anchor 2: In your article today you write to say that Khodorkovsky was the first to understand what epoch has ended and what epoch has come. What epoch has come, do you think?

Belkovsky: The epoch has come to re-think the values on which Russia was built after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the return to the Russian tradition, to the national and religious basics on which the statehood relied for a thousand years.

Anchor 1: Are you awaiting for repentance by other oligarchs and what should they repent for?

Anchor 2: Meaning the oligarchs of the Yeltsin "convocation"?

Belkovsky: Well, repentance is a very intimate process and one can only wait for it, you cannot stimulate the process and you cannot repent on schedule. It would be extremely strange if our oligarchs started to depict public repentance and that would have replaced the real process of them getting to the new level of communication with the country and the people.

Thus, in this sense Khodorkovsky is a big authority for the elite of the 1990s and for all who were guided by the liberal values in Russia and are still guided by them today and that is why his statements are of exceptional importance.

Anchor 1: The last question. You are also writing to say that according to you there is one person who can disturb his own loneliness and he is Vladimir Putin. What do you have in mind?

Belkovsky: Vladimir Putin is also as lonely today as Mikhail Khodorkovsky because he has no elite of his own. Putin is suspended over the country and between him and the country there is space without air, there is no strong stratum of people close to the decision-making process, people possessing certain virtues who rigidly link their vital interests with Putin's interests.

Also lonely in this sense is Khodorkovsky and he carried out a radical step that has cut him off from the entire liberal noise of the 1990s, from those molluscs that have stuck to him in recent years and in his sense there are conditions for a meeting of these two lonelinesses because as I said the article of Khodorkovsky is a claim to being a manifesto of that elite which Putin so acutely and objectively lacks regardless of whether he understands it today or not.

Anchor 2: Thank you very much. Our interlocutor was president of the Institute of National Strategy Stanislav Belkovsky.

Belkovsky: Thank you very much.