On June 22^nd Mikhail Khodorkovsky launched his blog on Medium.com

”New ideas drive society forward, and experience helps you avoid mistakes on the way. Ideas need to be discussed, and experience requires conceptualisation. Medium’s the perfect tool for that”

MBK

In his opening post, Mikhail Khodorkovsky explains why social activism is currently more important for him than politics, and talks about his personal goals as well as those of Open Russia. Khodorkovsky insists that people are more important than resources, that the only way for Russia to boost economic growth is to make a technological leap, that a ruthless government is not the same thing as a strong one. He also suggests several concrete steps to facilitate cooperation between people who see their future in a prosperous and open Russia.

“We’ll have to create a political system that will not allow a single individual to concentrate unlimited power in his hands. And such a system can be constructed only within the framework of a developed civil society. Which is why I’m engaged in social activism rather than politics.

Opposition forces at the moment lack a clear programme for change. Our task must be to design a future in which we’d all want to live. The theoretical construction of the future is one of Open Russia’s principal projects. We’re planning to enlist leading experts from Russia and worldwide as contributors to the development of our programme. In two years’ time we’ll present a fully-fledged programme of transformation and development.

Open Russia is not a political party. We’ve no plans to field candidates of our own. At the same time, we do want change, and are prepared to take upon ourselves the creation of infrastructure that would rectify distortions in the electoral system. We will organise a monitoring system that will not only report but prevent fraud. We will also offer candidates expert support, helping them formulate regional programmes, collect signatures and overcome prohibitive barriers.

We will not wash our hands of societal and educational challenges, and will devote particular attention to the humanities.

Assisting [political prisoners] is of fundamental importance, for [they] demonstrate to the law enforcement system that the rules can be broken — and in so doing they extrapolate this practice to the population at large.” 

MBK