“A year ago Yuri Markovich Schmidt passed away. He was my lawyer, my defender, and my friend.

It was very hard for me to accept that he had gone, I was then in prison, and now, in freedom, I sorely miss him. All our meetings in those prisons and jails were censored in one way or another, so there was much left unsaid.

Yuri Markovich wanted to live to the day when I would be free. He failed. I failed too. And this is how it is going to be forever. But my memories and gratitude are also forever.

His life was the embodiment of heroic qualities, his sense of citizenship, his professionalism and intelligence were his “easy breathing”; the first time we met I saw clearly that it just existed in him, what had been granted to him. He is an example of an extraordinary personality.

Yuri Markovich’s father spent 26 years in a Soviet Gulag. And so he worked all his life to break this people-hating machine called a ‘Gulag’. A year ago Yuri Markovich passed away. So we are to continue his work. The example is before our eyes.

In cherished memory of Yuri Markovich.

My support to his family and friends. I bow in front of Yelena Grigorievna.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky”