Khodorkovsky Hopeful for the Awakening of Russian Civil Society
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has found new hope in the “real awakening” of Russian civil society, his son said in an interview with AFP.
“For the first time in the past nine years, he has actually got this new hope,” Pavel Khodorkovsky said of his father.
“That hope is not linked to any legal processes or the possibility of a presidential pardon. No. It’s most closely linked with a real awakening of Russia’s civil society.”
The 27-year-old, who has lived in the United States for nine years, was in Washington for a conference organized by his pro-democracy Institute of Modern Russia.
Recent protests in Russia “mean that the so-called social contract foregoing freedoms and human rights in exchange for stability in economic prosperity … is expiring,” he said.
The younger Khodorkovsky said Barack Obama’s re-election, in relieving the pressure of a campaign, provides for more freedom “in determining a more appropriate, balanced foreign policy towards Russia.”
“It’s important for the American public to understand what kind of Russia, as a country, is waiting on the other side of this bilateral relationship,” he said, calling the current regime “practically authoritarian.”
Khodorkovsky, addressing his father’s detention, said he “never complains” and is in “very good” mental and physical health.
Since his transfer this year to a new prison camp on the border with Finland where he works in manufacturing of small office goods, Khordorkovsky is allowed to speak by phone 15 minutes a week, he said.
For “the first time in nine years, we’re able to speak directly.”
Khodorkovsky dedicates his few hours of “so-called free time” to writing, added his son, who last saw his father a month before he was arrested.
Pavel Khodorkovsky, who has a young daughter, said he has not been back to Russia since out of fear he “might become a leverage that can be used against my father.”
“What Mr Putin wants is an admission of guilt … he always brings up the topic of admission of guilt, so I don’t want to become this leverage.”
