Ksenia Sobchak, prominent Russian opposition leader and a member of the Opposition Council has exchanged correspondence with Mikhail Khodorkovsky during the past year.
An English translation of the first part can be read below:

Mikhail Borisovich, you know firsthand how the representatives of our ruling elite think and what is important for them.  What do you consider, can a split within today’s Kremlin elite take place as a consequence of internal causes?  And is it possible to stimulate this process from the outside?  If yes, then how?

MBK:  Without a doubt, the external environment does have a serious impact on the process of splitting elites.  After all, at the end of the day the winner has to get the support of society.

In particular, politically motivated trials of the opposition, the use of force on peaceful protesters, shameful decisions along the lines of the “Dima Yakovlev law” – are a most important factor in splits.  It is precisely the achievement of a split in the elite that is a mechanism for the victory of peaceful protest.  The opponents understand everything, and victims on the part of the protesters are unavoidable.

However, if violent confrontation strengthens the unity of the regime, then peaceful protest with victims destroys it.

There exists a hypothesis that the fierce reaction by the power to the protest manifestations is to a large degree conditioned by the fact that a series of people in Putin’s circle are persuading him of the necessity for repressive measures as the only way to hold on to power.  Does this theory seem plausible to you?  If yes, then who of Putin’s circle could be playing such a role?  And on the contrary – who of the political and business elite is capable of persuading Putin of the necessity to relax the regime?

MBK:  I am firmly convinced that the people grouping around Sechin (today I do not insist on his leadership role) consider violence to be the most convincing form of conversation with opponents.  They like the Chinese model of a state, but they do not understand it, just like they do not understand that this model is unsuitable for Russia.

There are enough people in Putin’s circle who do not like such an approach.  Only they are insufficiently motivated and organisationally fragmented.  That is why they are regularly trounced.

But until very recently, it still seemed to them that they could close their eyes on human rights for the sake of reforms in the economy, that they could agree with the dependence of the judiciary, that they could allow individual excesses along the lines of the “YUKOS affair”.  Only it turned out that destruction of the institutions of a law-based state, weakening civil society, and “tightening the screws” undermine not only the positions of the country, but their own personal political positions as well.  Many have now understood this, but fear and inertia of thought get in the way of fighting.

Which, from your point of view, people in the structures of power represent the greatest danger to the “dissenters”?

MBK:  It is obvious that the “supporters of the Chinese way” would be glad to send the “dissenters” to the camps.  They are not thinking of the inevitable consequences in the form of a loss of balance in international relations and the further weakening of scientific-and-industrial potential for the reason of linear thinking and insufficient education.

By the way, “if it gets to that”, it will not be they personally who will be locking people up, but the cowardly little thieves aspiring to atone for their little sins and get the opportunity to keep on stealing.  This is why the fight against corruption is a fight for democracy.

I am interested in your opinion as regards the problems connected with the republics of the North Caucasus.  The power prefers to placate the local powers (and in first order –Ramzan Kadyrov) with federal subsidies.  Part of the opposition is advancing the slogan:  “Quit feeding the Caucasus”.  What policy in the Caucasus, from your point of view, would be the most effective?

MBK:  Russia consists of territories found at various stages of social development – from post-industrial Moscow, Saint Petersburg, etc. to clan/tribal Chechnya and Daghestan.  In their wonderful work Hard To Be A God, the Strugatskys very clearly and comprehensibly showed the danger of an attempt to spur progress.  I shall add:  no less dangerous are aspirations to artificially slow it down (the examples of the cultural revolutions of Mao Zedong and Pol Pot are most edifying indeed).

Hence the conclusion:  we need to give the opportunity for a “multiple-speed” development of territories; properly speaking, this is the whole point of a federative structure.  And so, live however you want where you live, but do not violate human rights.  If you want to live in other subjects of the federation, respect the culture and traditions of the local population.  If you take kindness for weakness – you will regret it.

At the same time, we will check the successfulness of the reforms in the army and the special services, where there are three million (!) people – the population of a not-large European country.  Let them fight real extremists and bandits, and not concoct imaginary enemies out of those who support them with their taxes.

Mikhail Prokhorov, like you, came out of big Russian business.  Recently he declared that he would no longer engage in business and would concentrate entirely on political activity.  However, the opinion exists that entrepreneurs in our country can not be successful in politics in principle, because the laws in it are completely different than in business.  Are you in agreement with this opinion?

MBK:  Politics today – this is the business of the beginning of the nineties:  just about anything is allowed and where to draw the “red line” is entirely up to you.  To say that Prokhorov does not know how to play by the rules of the nineties would be strange.  Perhaps (I hope) he does not want to.  Is it possible to win in such a situation, by limiting oneself in the methods of struggle?  In the short-term perspective – I do not know.  In the long-term (and perhaps in the medium-term as well) there is no other way.  The morality of the methods determines the morality of the results.

But, without a doubt, politics and big business are not exactly one and the same.  The businessmen who will succeed in politics are those who have the corresponding instincts and orientation towards appealing to the masses.  This is confirmed by the success of Berlusconi, Bloomberg, Ivanishvili, etc.

One more question in regards to Prokhorov.  You no doubt know that he is suspected of having close ties with the Kremlin.  There are those who criticise him for this.  There are others who, on the contrary, consider that he has chosen the right tactic and that only interaction with the power in today’s conditions will allow him to achieve a noticeable result.  What do you consider:  can an opposition politician in today’s Russia work together with the power?  Is a politician of a moderate ilk, who does not advance radical slogans, achieve credibility in the protest movement?  Become its leader and receive the support of the protest electorate?

MBK:  I have consistently advocated the position that it is imperative to maintain certain contacts with the power and that negotiations are useful.  However, we must understand that the protest electorate expects the politicians who represent it to defend its interests, which the power refuses to take into consideration for some reason or other.  If all you do is conduct negotiations, without bringing appropriate and sufficient pressure to bear, the probability is high that you will not achieve results.  That is, the opposition politician is obligated – besides conducting negotiations – to offer his electorate methods of pressure on the power and to organise such pressure.

Is Prokhorov ready for work such as this?  For now, particular activeness can not be seen.  Is it possible to prepare a political infrastructure outside of political struggle?  I think not.  The main thing here is people, and people who are not accustomed to fighting are not going to become successful fighters “all of a sudden”.  The example of Bolotnaya and Sakharov is instructive in this sense.

Many of the protest leaders have themselves come to the understanding that the opposition is in need of a so-called “constructive agenda”.  What would you advise them to do?  How to break out of that vicious circle that I described above?

MBK:  I suppose that the “constructive agenda” is that same struggle to achieve precisely chosen, individual aims.  Aims that are either insignificant (of a municipal or regional level), where the power is prepared to make concessions in a series of instances, or socially significant aims, ones where the power can not ignore the protest without big image losses.  An example of the first kind – the housing-and-public-utilities sector in the narrow sense of this word, or emergency situations.  An example of the second kind – corruption in a concrete agency.

Perhaps you are aware that I got into the Russian Opposition Coordination Council, elected in October.  I will admit that I had my doubts and concerns connected with this project.  I would like to know your opinion about this structure and its prospects.  How do you assess the results of the elections?  What threats and underwater rocks do you see in the work of the CC?

MBK:  I consider the CC a useful experience in the self-organisation of the Russian opposition.  The composition of the council reflects the views of the educated, young, and politically active part of society, comprising around seven-eight percent of the country’s population.  The significance of this group is substantially higher than its numerical share, inasmuch as in a post-industrial economy it is specifically people such as these who create basic value.  At the same time, their political interests are practically not represented in power today.

I see two main problems in the work of the council.  First, people (the electors) still do not understand their real political interests and their interconnection with practical, everyday life; therefore, on the one hand, they are pushing the council toward harebrained schemes, and on the other – they are going to be dissatisfied with the result.  Second, the council itself has not yet found attainable practical objectives for its work that could be presented to people as deserving of support.  All the rest – technical questions.

In your last years at liberty, you devoted a lot of attention to various projects for the formation of a civil society within the framework of “Open Russia”.  If you now had the opportunity to start everything anew, which of the projects would you consider priority ones and which, from your point of view, have lost their relevance?

MBK:  Probably there would not be any sense now in re-creating the Federation of Internet-Education.  Its tasks have essentially been fulfilled:  the internet has become accessible to anyone – nearly anyone – who wants.  The “Club of Regional Journalism”, “Public Verdict”, the “School of Public Policy”, and certain others continue to function on their own.  A pity about the “New Civilisation” project.  The Kremlin made a parody of it in the form of Seliger and has thereby discredited the idea to a large extent.

I suppose that now I would think about working with volunteer movements; about promoting political co-ordination-and-discussion platforms along the lines of the CC in the regions; about public arbitration; about independent councils for the protection of human rights; about an opposition and human rights internet portal.

The power’s repressions against political opponents often have setting the leaders off against the activists as their goal.  Rank-and-file participants in a protest are sent behind bars, at the same time as the leaders remain at large, for example under a signed pledge not to leave town.  This, of course, introduces an emotional split into the protest movement:  relatives and close ones of the arrested people publicly reproach the leaders because “the kids are locked up for them”.  The rout of YUKOS began the same way:  the first arrests touched your colleagues and comrades.  Do you feel a personal responsibility for those people who were locked up under the “YUKOS affair” merely because they were associated with you?

MBK:  Without a doubt, I do feel a personal responsibility for every person who ended up in jail as the result of my confrontation with the power.  Such responsibility is the burden of every leader.  Not to feel it is cynicism.  But if it begins to dictate all of one’s behaviour, the leader will lose the ability to act.  As in everything, one needs to find a balance.  However, to forget about one’s own is treason.  One needs to remember:  “the war is not over until the last soldier alive has returned home”.

I have often heard the opinion that after your release you may become one of the leaders of the Russian opposition.  You have rejected such a possibility on numerous occasions; however, there is no doubt:  your prestige in society has noticeably increased over the years in jail.  Support on your part for that or the other politician will have serious implications.  If your opinion relative to your own prospects has not changed, to whom would you be ready to lend such support?

MBK:  I can not yet make a firm commitment, first and foremost because I am living in conditions of a serious shortage of information.  But the key condition for supporting any competent politician on my part will be not simply a clear-cut declaration by him of his democratic reference points, but a firm promise to immediately reduce the volume of the president’s powers in favour of the legislative power, the judiciary, and the regions.  The power of the president must be balanced, and the opposition (any opposition!  even if this is UR and the communists) must get at least oversight functions in the system of state bodies.  A politician who adheres to other views with respect to these questions is regarded by me as an unquestionable opponent.  As to the list of prospective people, it is well known, and you, without a doubt, are in their number.

The fierce standoff between the power and the opposition has led to a situation where making categorical judgments has become intrinsic to people on both sides of the notional barricades.  In the Kremlin, they consider all dissenters to be “foreign agents”.  In the opposition, any contacts with representatives of the power are considered to be treason.  And as to the people who empathise with the opposition but allow themselves to address criticism at it, these are ever more frequently being called “murzilki”.  How to overcome this mutual radicalisation and “witch hunting”?  And how, on the other hand, to nevertheless distance oneself from the true Kremlin “murzilki”?

MBK:  I sometimes get the feeling that people are afraid not only to speak, but to think as well.  I have already written to the CC:  the alternative to negotiations is violence.  Peaceful protest also requires victims, but ends in compromise, guarantees to the parties.  If a person is against negotiations in principle, he either does not intend to achieve victory or must call for violence.  There is no other way to replace an authoritarian regime – either by peaceful protest with victims and negotiations, or by violence, or by a combination of both.

The rest – idle talk that has not been thought through.  The CC is a body that is unsuitable for organising violence, either by its personnel makeup or organisationally/structurally.  I personally am not prepared to call for armed struggle with the regime, and consider it both amoral and irresponsible, but, judging by the recently ended trial of the military pensioners, I do allow for the possibility of other points of view.  However, those who are not calling for armed struggle, yet demand abandoning contacts with the power, had better think and, perhaps, join with the Taoists or other followers of the philosophy of “inaction”, and not engage in practical politics.

The question of the time for and the tactics of negotiations – another topic.

As concerns criticism of the opposition under the slogan “a plague on both your houses”, which some Rossiyskaya gazeta and Expert authors like to engage in, and sometimes even MK, here the matter is complex.  The opposition, of course, needs to be criticised.  All the more so given that sometimes its resemblance to the power really does get frightening.  However, an obvious substitution of meanings, when something that the power ought to be doing is being demanded of the opposition – for example saving sick children or looking after public utilities – is, without a doubt, a sign of a “murzilka”.

I see one of the ways to fight such phenomena in public hearings (on Dozhd, Ekho Moskvy, on influential internet resources, etc.), where it is proposed to a person to clarify his point of view.  I proceed from the conception that we are talking specifically of political struggle, that is of regime change and coming to power, and not exclusively about civic activity to help people survive under this regime, which is not ruled out as such.  Political dispute (open) is a useful thing indeed.  Here it is important to force people to understand that they are going to have to answer publicly for their words or admit that they are half-wits.

Democracy – this is rule by the majority taking into account the rights of minorities.  Do you not, think that even under the condition of honest elections and freedom of the mass information media, the majority of citizens is still going to elect Putin or any other authoritarian ruler?  In other words:  is Russian society ready for democracy?

MBK:  Dear Kseniya, why oh why are you reading and listening to our home-bred philosophers?  If modern democracy assumed majority rule, even if it does take the opinion of the minority into account, I would be the first adversary of such democracy.  Modern-day democracy is a mechanism for co-ordinating the interests of the minorities that a modern-day society consists of.  The essence of co-ordinating interests is to reach an understanding about the rules of community life in points of common interest.  In those areas where interests are autonomous, individuals and their associations are free.

Now about who “society chooses”.  Berlusconi – and perhaps Schroeder as well – are no less authoritarian than Putin.  However, the political elite (that is, politically active citizens who possess the corresponding knowledge and skills) do not allow them to cross the line.  And there are sufficiently many methods of exerting such influence.

In the case of our country – and from the practical point of view – when Putin leaves, a confrontation between forces is inevitable.  What is important is that those who are going to be found in union with democratic politicians win, and, after the victory, that institutional obstacles to the restoration of authoritarianism be created.  It is precisely for this reason that I talk about the key conditions for supporting politicians.  It is possible that the democrats will lose once again.  There are such examples in the world.  Then we will not be able to build a knowledge economy, and, taking geopolitical realities into account, the country’s prospects will be gloomy indeed.

The question about the readiness of Russian society for democracy is similar to the conception of democracy as a luxury.  Democracy is not a symbol, not a fetish, but a mechanism for managing a complex modern society not through forcible unification (as in the case of authoritarianism), but through co-ordination of the interests of individuals and their associations.  Humanity has not come up with better mechanism for a large country with an educated population.  Russia is a sufficiently large country, and the population is sufficiently educated.  This means that the best mechanism of administration for Russia is this:

– separation and balance of powers;

– formation and regular rotation of power by way of elections;

– the presence of an opposition capable of carrying out oversight functions in relation to the power.

And this is just what a modern-day democracy is from an organisational point of view.

Do you consider that the middle class in Russia has accumulated the necessary strength and influence to change the situation in the country?  Will the capabilities of the so-called “angry urbanites” and “intellectual elite” be enough for our country to start on on the path of political liberalisation?

MBK:  I shall repeat myself – I am a supporter of the conception of “several Russias”.  That is, I deem that territories with different levels of social development co-exist inside our country.  In order for the country to be competitive, the post-industrial segment must be sufficiently large (sixty-seventy percent).  What is being spoken of is the big cities.  With the right organisation, it is precisely the big cities and the educated citizens that establish the “rules of the game”.  In these cities – Moscow, St. Pete, Ekaterinburg, Rostov, etc. – the situation is close to a switchover to modern rails, although work is still required.  As for today’s Russian power, it relies (and the longer, the more so) on the conservative part of society, not giving the cities the necessary level of political representation.

This conflict can not be resolved in any other way than through protest.  The result of the protest must become a split in the ruling elite and the cities’ getting the level of political representation that corresponds to their economic and intellectual potential.

The alternative model is preservation of a power relying on the conservative majority.  This is a path to socio-economic degeneration, which is fraught with the potential for social explosion and geopolitical unpleasantness.  By the way, the cities, of course, will be victorious.  It is just that one would like to see it happen more quickly, not in twenty years.

In your time, you published the article “A turn to the left”, in which you formulated a thesis about the social responsibility of business.  Have you perhaps become disenchanted with this idea?  And what, from your point of view, can opposition politicians offer to the business elite in order to enlist its support?

MBK:  Properly speaking, the essence of the article boiled down to asserting the inevitability of a “turn to the left”, which has indeed taken place.  And further, I recommended models of behaviour to both business and the opposition that would allow them to reach success in the conditions of the given political reality.

The forecast turned out to have been accurate, so the only thing there is to be disenchanted about is that the liberals did not pay heed back then.  As to business, it was deliberately “separated” from society by the power.  Today, a new stage is close at hand, and the advice is going to be different.  And in order to attain the support of business, the opposition has to show only one thing – it really is laying claim to power.  The rest is secondary.

You have no doubt heard of the scandal connected with the film Anatomiya protesta – 2, and in particular with the publicly disclosed negotiations between Sergei Udaltsov and Georgian parliamentarian Givi Targamadze.  Leaving aside the question of the legality of the video recording published on NTV, I want to learn your opinion of Sergei Udaltsov.  I have had numerous occasions to hear that the protest movement will win if it distances itself from the radicals.  On the other hand, there exists a point of view that the main thing for the opposition today is unity and overcoming mutual contradictions and enmities.  What is your opinion on this account?

MBK:  As long as Udaltsov, like any other politician, is prepared to reach agreement on joint peaceful struggle for a regime change to a more democratic one, co-operation within the framework of the CC is imperative.  However, abandonment of the conception of democratisation in favour of any other objectives (like dictatorship of the proletariat) or a declaration about transition to violent methods of resistance are unacceptable within the framework of today’s model of interaction.

And as concerns Anatomiya in general and Targamadze with his thirty thousand dollars in particular, it is complex to discuss this plot line seriously.  Especially for those who, like me, know the existing practice of all the parliamentary parties perfectly well.  Which, of course, does not rule out the need to behave oneself politically more carefully.

You yourself were at one time a part of the system that has now turned against us.  Did you do things in those years that you now regret?

I am not Boris Abramovich and I have never exaggerated my place in the “system”, likely comparable to the level of a deputy minister of the Soviet time.  I simply did not have the opportunity to do something so substantial and not right that I would now “deeply regret” it.

The thing I personally am most ashamed of is participation in the events of 1993.  Another way out should have been found.  About the rest I have already written in my book.

Privatisation, including the loans-for-shares auctions, was not, as is known, thought up by me, but I am not ashamed for what I did in YUKOS.  Doubling production after I got a company where production was falling is quite a good result.  And we practically doubled explored reserves as well.  In the USSR they used to give medals for things like that.  Nowadays they give jail terms.  The fields equipped by us and the renovated refineries have not gone anywhere, while I personally spent less on myself than government bureaucrats.

Your lobbying activity in the Duma – the practice of buying the loyalty of deputies, for example – was broadly discussed in society.  Do you consider today that the system can be outplayed honestly, or can one not get by without such methods of struggle all the same?

One needs to distinguish between lobbying the business interests of an industry and political struggle with an authoritarian regime.  In the first instance, whatever is not prohibited by law and deputies’ ethics is allowed.  In the second – the methods of business lobbying are practically useless.  The stakes are completely different, the opponents’ methods are much fiercer, and, alas, they lie far beyond the limits of the law.

My unchanged position:  a law on lobbyism is imperative for business.  Honest and detailed.  The power needs regular rotation and oversight on the part of the opposition.  Another way does not exist to defeat the decaying of the state, anything-goes lawlessness by officials, and corruption.

As it happens, I communicate with your former oligarch-partners in different transactions, and all these people – in their number are both Fridman and Abramovich – without collusion, speak about how in business, you behaved, to put it mildly, “toughly”.  And to put it crudely – you were the toughest oligarch of that time.  What can you answer to this?

It is complex for me to comment on what my former colleagues had in mind.  Likely not anything criminal, otherwise this would have long ago been known by all through the efforts of the “diggers” from the prosecutor’s office.  And besides, Abramovich in 2003 would hardly be likely to have decided on the merger of our companies.

Toughness in big business is always visible, thanks to the scales.  For example, it is well known that there was a multitude of deaths around the aluminium business in Siberia.  YUKOS’s transfer into the hands of Rosneft (Sechin) has been distinguished by dozens of innocent people who ended up in jail or emigration.  About YUKOS there are no such stories.  And so it was that the prosecutors had to make up unintelligible motives in order to hang murders on employees of the company.

It is indeed useless to pressure me in those questions that I consider to be ones of principle for myself.  For example, I never negotiated with gangsters.  Nor do I do this now, in jail.  As concerns revisiting business behaviour, I had to do it many a time, to the extent of the development of an understanding of the normal rules of the game.  And, as an example, in the 2000s I behaved differently with minority shareholders than I did in the 1990s.

There exists a theory according to which you and Putin, like many other oligarchs in our country, had an unspoken “understanding” – VVP does not touch your business, but you, the oligarchs, do not try to get into politics.  Did you understand that such an agreement existed?  And if you did understand, then why did you violate it nevertheless?

I shall say directly:  to believe in such a “contract” is unforgiveable naïveté.  Big business has everywhere and always been and continues to be an influential political player, while Putin is far from a naïve person.  This myth, along with the myths about unilateral nuclear disarmament and “hands up to the elbow in blood”, was thought up as an effective cover for the real aims:  to take the key economic, political, and mass-media centres of influence under the direct control of today’s power clique.  As a result – a definitive change in the form of rule from democratic to authoritarian and “stability” that has turned into stagnation and putrefaction.

I would never sign on to participate in such a project.  And besides, no one offered it to me.

What reassessment of values took place with you in jail?  Can your detention be divided up into some kind of emotional/psychological stages (denial, despair, fear, resignation)?  And if yes, then what stages were these?  It would be very interesting to obtain an expanded answer – even in your book with Gevorkyan you almost do not touch upon this.

Without a doubt, jail, like a monastery, restricting a person’s participation in external events, forces one to focus on the internal.  In this sense, a reassessment of values is inevitable.  Being cut off from family, from close people, leads to a more acute awareness of their significance in one’s life.

It takes five years to get used to non-freedom.  After that – routine.  In my situation, the first two years became the most complex, when it was hard to believe what was happening – the pillaging of one of the best Russian companies, the completely unlawful claims and thuggish court decisions, and, the main thing – the cruel, demonstrative bulldozing of completely innocent, ordinary people.  After all, thousands of employees went through harsh interrogations.  The searches and the arrests turned into a conveyor belt, being broadcast directly into the jail cell courtesy of NTV.

What was going on inside me was not a reassessment of values; what was happening was that I was getting used to new rules of the game.  It would be useful for everybody to know them, because if a person turns out to have gotten in the way of someone of today’s power clique – and any police sergeant on a patrol beat regards himself as being a member of it – then it will be short-sighted to start recalling constitutional rights.

There is no equality before the law – a prosecutorial or judicial official will twist the law any way at all if the bosses so desire.  Clarity of the text of the law is not going to change anything here.  Presumption of innocence – it does not exist:  anything an operative or an investigator comes up with elicits the full confidence of the judicial establishment.  The criminality of citizens is automatically assumed; so is the honesty and selflessness of officialdom.  The only thing the court in Moscow is independent of is the law.  The city court, the representative of the administration of the president, is the absolute top boss, whose commands are not discussed, but dutifully solicited.

Prosecutors, investigators, and their press secretaries – with the exception of rare individuals – lie all the time.  Even when they could tell the truth.  They lie simply out of habit.  They lie to society, to the court, and to one another.  Truth comes out of their mouths only in order to muffle distrust and to lie.

This is an entirely different milieu, a different world, which I had to get used to.  Here, kindness is always perceived of as weakness, directness as naïveté; selflessness and idealism evoke absolute antagonism and suspicion, and are automatically appraised, as deviousness.

No matter, I got used to it.  But I did not learn how to live that way myself – too repugnant.  Have I resigned myself to it?  No.  More likely I have learnt how to better distinguish between what is important and what is secondary.  And the important things – to not even discuss them, but merely to specify and to assert them to the end, whatever they may be.

The “law enforcers”, or, as they say here, the “militia”, have not become enemies for me, but after approximately two years I stopped behaving towards them with my  former deference, I stopped respecting the judiciary, I stopped being afraid of jail, of death…  The line turned out to have been crossed.

You were a dedicated supporter of the Soviet empire, then apparently a cynical co-operative member without views and convictions, a greedy business shark, a political manipulator, and, finally, a prisoner of conscience.  How have you reassessed your behaviour in the different years of your life?  Do you not consider that this path is very Russian?  That metaphorically this is the path of an entire generation?

I had a dream:  to become the director of a plant.  And I moved towards it through the Soviet empire, through the co-operatives and the NTTM centres, through work in government, and “political manipulations”.  And when I got there, I understood, I understood after the crisis of 1998 that the goal can not be “bricks and mortar”, only people.

The only thing it makes sense to spend life on is people.

Such is my goal now, my free choice – to work for people.  As to the fact that to be free in Russia signifies being a prisoner of conscience, well, this is indeed our traditional Russian way.

Many in Russia do not believe in anything other than their own star, fate, their own strength.  Because for many, the power is a bunch of crooks, the people dark and ignorant, so the only thing left is to count on yourself.  In what do you truly believe in our country today?  Do you consider that Russia is a country of dying civilisation?

Yes, we are individualists, despite the talk about communalism [sobornost].  This can be seen well if we compare Russians with some national diasporas.

In order to survive, as a stand-alone part of European civilisation in the modern world, we need – whilst remaining self-sufficient, free individuals – to create a common instrument for effectively combining our efforts – a democratic nation state, which must come to replace today’s archaic inheritance of the Tatar-Mongol empire.  And we will do this!