American Magazine, The New Republic, has published correspondence between Polish historian, former dissident, public intellectual, and the Editor-in-Chief of Poland’s largest newspaper Gazeta Wyborcz, Adam Michnik, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which took place during 2012 and early 2013.

During the exchange of letters both men consider the current repression spreading through Putin’s Russia. Michnik compares Khodorkovsky’s case with the trials of the Stalin years while Khodorkovsky writes that the Putin regime favours radicals and punishes moderates, and predicts that Putin faces some difficult years ahead.

Khodorkovsky tells Michnik he believes “that our nation has a right to a decent life. Unfortunately, by itself the right will not suffice—it has to be secured. It is necessary to “come out of the trenches.” Events in the winter and summer of 2011 and 2012 proved that in today’s Russia there are people who want this.”

Michnik replies that he admires Khodorkovsky’s resolve and labels him the “moral leader of the opposition against the Putinist “sovereign democracy” that propagates barbarity and the police state.”

Michnik concludes that until Khodorkovsky is released, declarations about the modernisation of Russia will “remain empty platitudes.”

The full correspondence can be read here.

American Magazine, The New Republic, has published correspondence between Polish historian, former dissident, public intellectual, and the Editor-in-Chief of Poland’s largest newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam Michnik, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which took place during 2012 and early 2013.

During the exchange of letters both men consider the current repression spreading through Putin’s Russia. Michnik compares Khodorkovsky’s case with the trials of the Stalin years while Khodorkovsky writes that the Putin regime favours radicals and punishes moderates, and predicts that Putin faces some difficult years ahead.

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