Ksenia Sobchak and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s correspondence continues (the first part can be read here); this time Khodorkovsky puts questions to Sobchak. Below is an English translation:

1

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: I’m following your personal evolution with great interest. Many of my friends and acquaintances are inclined not to trust you very much. They write to me and say that your sudden transformation is nothing more than a nod to fashion and trends, so as to always be what is called “a part of the ‘in crowd’”. They’re saying that today it’s fashionable to be against the power – boring, aesthetically unattractive, over the hill. So we’re going to be against it. But I personally believe in your sincerity, and that you’re not acting, but have indeed decided to change you own life’s script.

It is possible that my attitude is connected with the fact that I myself had, at approximately the same age, sent back my party card to the CPSU district committee and come out on the barricades to the White House, understanding perfectly well how this could end. I am confident that you are taking steps judiciously, and not under the influence of a sudden surge of emotions; I would therefore like to have a more precise understanding of your views.

Since the time that your public career began – the word-combination “long years” is not completely appropriate here on the strength of your young age – you have, for completely understandable reasons, been perceived of as a person close to Vladimir Putin, a figure of the inner presidential circle. Crossing over – and already practically having crossed over – to “the other side”, do you perceive of yourself as a new oppositioneer or rather as a person capable of building a “bridge of mutual understanding” between Putin and the opposition? To put right the dialogue which, to my view, is imperative for society, but for a series of reasons is lacking?

Ksenia Sobchak: I try to realistically assess my capabilities in the current political solitaire. I’m afraid that for now I don’t have any chance to lay claim to the role of a person capable of putting right the “bridge of mutual understanding” between the power and its opponents. It seems that in the Kremlin they perceive of me as something even worse than merely an opponent. To them I’m a traitor.

By the way, this is even too strong a word. More likely over there they consider Gennady Gudkov to be a traitor – a person from the system, an officer of the KGB, who went over to the other side. As for me, by all appearances Vladimir Putin considers me a spoiled child who doesn’t know what she’s doing. They obviously can’t understand my motivation: why did the successful daughter of a senator-mother, who seems to have everything, go sticking her nose into a men’s fight? After all, in the Kremlin they obviously sincerely believe that my well-being became the result of their benevolence, that’s why they appraise criticism as ingratitude and just plain take offense, get angry, and set up public floggings for me. I think that Charles de Gaulle must have experienced similar feelings in 1968 in relation to the rebellious generation of young Parisians: “Ungrateful youths, I gave you the opportunity to live in a free country, to study and work. And this is how you’ve repaid me? With student riots?”

I understand why pressure is being exerted on me, why they’ve deprived me of a job and have entered me on the blacklists of all the federal television channels. That is how they perceive me. However, I think that the organisers of this pressure are themselves uncomfortable because of the fact that they genuinely can’t understand my motivation. I don’t fit neatly into their picture of the world, where a “satiated” person can’t rebel. After all, any ruler knows how to act with the hungry – you need to feed them. But what do you do with a dissenting satiated person? For now they haven’t come up with anything better than to give them a good scare.

I, in my turn, genuinely don’t understand how one can put right the dialogue of the power with the dissenting part of society. We’ve gotten ourselves into a deadlock. On the one hand, the opposition doesn’t recognise the legitimacy of the power and is ready to conduct negotiations only about its capitulation. On the other hand, the Kremlin is capable of talking only with those who are found inside the political system and who are in actual fact a satellite of the power, and not its real opponent.

It remains to hope only that the power’s attack on the radical representatives of the opposition will nevertheless change to an attempt to start talking with the “angry urbanites”. After all, this attack is obviously conditioned by a fear of political competition with figures such as Navalny. I hope that when they understand that nobody has any intention of storming the Kremlin, then they will start behaving more calmly and sensibly.

2

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Most likely your social circle has changed substantially in connection with your sharp and rapid transition into a new niche. How do your friends from “yesterday” – among whom, I’m sure, are also the richest and most influential people in the country – look at your “today”? How do they see your “tomorrow”, if it’s not a secret?

Ksenia Sobchak: I was pleasantly surprised at how many influential people have expressed support for me in the past few months. Perhaps the power elites are not nearly as monolithic as it may seem at times, and their splitting is quite possible indeed.

Yes, big money loves quiet, and there are few who are ready to openly express their dissent. Yes, business is scared, while the “Khodorkovsky affair”, like the legend about the “headless horseman”, lives on in the minds, the hearts, and – the main thing – the wallets of entrepreneurs. The system whereby the oligarchs all cover each other’s backsides makes the “captains of business” extremely vulnerable before the power: a criminal case can be hatched against any one of them for old sins, and nobody wants to pull the tiger’s whiskers by engaging in public criticism. However, I’m beginning to get the feeling that fear no longer has such a strong hold on these people. This is no longer horror that paralyses the will, it is more apprehension and cautiousness.

At the same time, I was astounded at how clearly they understand everything. Admitting that they’re not ready to support me openly, off the record, businessmen give the Russian power such harsh assessments that even the most radical oppositioneers seem like moderate diplomats against their background. In all this time I never met a single person (not one!) among my influential acquaintances who approves of what is going on in the state.

You, by the way, have raised an interesting topic: how these people assess my prospects. I must confess that they describe my personal future in rather sombre tones. They don’t believe that the country can change, and consider that I have taken an unjustifiable risk. They’re saying that I’ll have everything taken from me. Why fight for people who will never be grateful to you? – these people, in their words, don’t like me anyway and will never understand me. From the point of view of my influential acquaintances, I and those who think like me have completely different values in comparison with the basic mass of the population of our country. The people, so they’re saying, are always going to detest the rich and successful, so what’s the point of risking everything for the sake of those who despise you?

3

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Were you expecting that they would, crudely speaking, bump you off federal television? Or did this become an unexpected surprise for you? Was this painful?

Ksenia Sobchak: I understood perfectly well that they’d remove me from the federal channels. There were no illusions: I saw how this took place with my colleagues who had fallen into disfavour. However, how coarsely and harshly they put me under prohibition nevertheless did arouse bewilderment. It got to the point of cancellation of a previously planned concert.

But now, that armed OMONs and investigators would come into my house with a search, of course, became an unexpected surprise. I didn’t think they’d go that far. I’ll tell you honestly: in that moment I was truly scared because I was completely helpless and had nothing at all with which to counter the unfairness with a machine gun at the ready.

4

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: How do you perceive your new comrades in the Russian opposition? Do you consider that it is precisely these people who must become and are worthy of becoming the new generation of Russian power? Or will the circle be expanding? Or perhaps narrowing?

Ksenia Sobchak: I sincerely hope that this circle is going to expand. As I’ve already written, the opposition is catastrophically short on experience and professionalism. Well, and a qualitative reset of the protest movement against the background of intensifying reaction remains only a hope for now. The opposition leaders are not going to have it easy now: they need to withstand the growing pressing and one way or the other to bear responsibility for the “missed chance of December”. In defence of these people, it can be said that there were no ready-made recipes and much of the fault for this missed chance lay in the stubbornness and deafness of the power, which wasn’t ready even for a minimal renewal.

I hope nevertheless that the power is heterogeneous and that people interested in reforms are going to start to appear within the system itself.

5

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: What do you personally consider the basic criteria for success in your current activity?

Ksenia Sobchak: A criterion of success can be considered the start of real political reform, aimed at the forming in Russia of democratic institutions.

I understand that this is impossible to attain without a building up of street protest. This task can not be resolved with nothing but resolutions, loud declarations and discussions in Facebook. But how to build up protest in conditions of television censorship and high oil prices? The popular answer: supplement civic pathos with social subject matter. I, however, don’t share this point of view and fear that the protest will descend into cheap populism.

An alternative to social populism must become enlightenment, the displacement of indifference and civic atomisation. Our path – the creation and development of urban projects, which could become a habitat for people sharing the values of freedom and democracy. In their time, jeans and sneakers did much more for perestroika than speeches from podiums. In the same way today, new cultural projects, cafés, co-working studios and Afisha Picnics are certainly capable of doing more for the awakening of civic consciousness than the denunciatory speeches of the leaders of the opposition.

6

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Are you working on new media projects? Are you thinking about them? And all the same, what do you feel yourself to be more these days – a politician or a media personality, albeit of a new level, quality, and format?

Ksenia Sobchak: I am happy that despite all the difficulties, I still have the opportunity to realise myself in what I love to do. I’m doing two projects on the “Dozhd” television channel that are very important for me: the broadcast Sobchak zhivyem [Sobchak live] and the talk show Gosdep-3 [State Department-3] (shut down, by the way, on another television channel out of censorship considerations). Likewise this year I became the editor-in-chief of the magazine SNC. We’re trying to make the first intellectual glossy magazine for young women in Russia. I’m managing to continue my work on radio for now as well.

Censorship forms a toxic environment for engaging in journalism, but I’m nevertheless planning to engage in it going forward as well. I don’t have any plans for now to reinvent myself as a political figure: politics itself has knocked on my door, and not very kindly at that. I love my profession, I love television, the feeling of being live on the air and the nervous excitement before coming out on stage. But I love freedom too. And I’m going to fight for it.

7

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Russia – a country with a long-held tradition of authoritarianism. Your position – change the leader, the leader’s behaviour, or the tradition?

Ksenia Sobchak: I’m reading your question and realising just how ambitious the goals I’m setting for myself are. I am in absolute agreement: Russia has historically formed as an authoritarian country, where democracy has never taken root even for ten years. I often ask myself this thorny question: do the preconditions for power of the people exist in our fatherland? Just where did we come up with the notion that a patriarchal authoritarian power would be transformed beyond recognition after a couple of rallies?

I, however, don’t want to lose heart, and I am going to strive to overcome this centuries-old apathy. Although I do understand just how complex a task this is.

8

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: It would be no exaggeration to say that the president today enjoys dictatorial powers. What do you consider: should (and can) these powers be used for conducting economic reforms or should a part of the powers be rejected in favour of the creation of normal civic institutions and the development of a civil society, and an attempt made to conduct the reforms already based on this?

Ksenia Sobchak: These powers could and should have been used, had the hope for “perestroika 2.0” justified itself.

Practically always the success of reforms in Russia was possible only when they were conducted from above (and Gorbachev is no exception here). I maintain that in 2000 many supporters of reforms gave their vote to Putin. People understood that we were going toward an authoritarian model, but they believed that even though the new president would concentrate unlimited power in his hands, he would direct it toward good – first and foremost at economic reforms. Many, as it seems to me, hoped then that Putin would become a kind of “Pinochet without blood”, capable of using tough and decisive actions to ensure an economic breakthrough for the country. Twelve years on it’s obvious that these hopes were not justified.

Now, if we speak of regime change, the greatest danger, to my view, consists of the fact that one set of usurpers will be replaced by another under democratic slogans. The key task in these conditions is to change the system of power. Because under the current state of things, any opposition leader, having taken Putin’s place, will become his twin after a while.

9

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: The Russian tradition of leader-worship, on the one hand, forces the opposition to fear one-man leadership by someone, but on the other hand, our society, especially its conservative part, is accustomed to associating its choice specifically with a leader. The lack of the customary place of a leader reduces the opposition’s attractiveness for a significant electoral segment. As a specialist in the realm of public communications, what would you see as the solution to the problem?

Ksenia Sobchak: I consider that this is one of the main problems of Russian society. As I’ve already written, it is complex to find the preconditions for democracy in our country. For centuries a model of interrelations between the power and society was propagated here that was based on the “master/slave” or “chief/subordinate” principle. Large-scale enlightenment work is imperative in order to overcome this.

At the same time, I consider that people, as a rule, adapt to an imposed system of social relations. Therefore, the forming of a liberal-democratic system, from my point of view, will inevitably lead to an overall humanisation of society (like the establishment of an authoritarian state inevitably leads to exasperation and internal confrontation). Psychology plays an important role here: if people have become used to violating the law in everyday life for years, they’re not going to consider falsification of elections to be something egregious. And on the contrary: the assertion in society of the understanding that violating the law is amoral is going to simultaneously contribute to laws starting to answer to the interests of citizens, and not contradicting them.

10

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: The power is declaring to the voter that there are no people among the oppositioneers who are capable of running the country and who have the relevant experience. Furthermore, the power is showing society a television picture with a very limited number of faces. As a result, the ordinary person gets the feeling that there is no alternative to the current team. In what way could the opposition change the situation? What do you see the potential of your new acquaintances (comrades) in the opposition as being? What for you was expected and what was an unexpected surprise?

Ksenia Sobchak: There are indeed plenty of loudmouths incapable of constructive work in the opposition; people who turn out to be in the centre of attention exclusively thanks to outrageous behaviour and a good pair of lungs. However, there are also pragmatic and efficient politicians, capable of daily diligent work. But in the system that has evolved, even such politicians have no chances to develop their skills whilst remaining true to principles (simply because the development of these skills is possibly only within the state administrative system). After all, the selection of cadres in our country is organised in such a manner that professionalism and working capacity are not a competitive advantage, while the main criterion for being hired to the state service is loyalty and once again loyalty.

In such a manner, oppositioneers don’t have the opportunity to realise themselves in practical work and to show what they are capable of. And this is precisely what they are criticised for most of all – for an inability to engage in creative activity. An endless circle.

The feeling that there is no alternative to Putin and his entourage is being artificially imposed by these same people in specifically this way: squeezing disloyal politicians out from the mechanisms of running the country. And in order to create the illusion of competition, they keep so-called system oppositioneers at the feeding trough – in their basic mass these are comical and innocuous personages who don’t represent any danger to the power and who fulfil the function of sparring partners at elections.

I am convinced that the appearance of an organised and independent opposition force would without a doubt make Russian politics healthy and would be useful both for the power and for the protest movement. But all of this will remain at the level of talk until the democrats overcome their eternal problem – not knowing how to reach agreement and to defer leadership. I am amazed that the opposition leaders can not give up their ambitions even though it seems that everybody understands that disunity is the main obstacle on the path to success. On the other hand, technologists from the administration of the president, deftly playing on the contradictions, are constantly setting the oppositioneers at loggerheads with one another, thereby reducing the opposition’s potential.

One of my biggest disappointments – the inability of the opposition leaders to work together and to go for mutual concessions.

11

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Today the power is creating such a legislative field which, coupled with the practice of the application of law, rules out the possibility of any real influence on the power on the part of society. That is, you need to either get used to it and shut up, or risk your own well-being, if not your liberty, even if you don’t violate the law. It’s understandable, one person’s decision doesn’t influence anything, while calling on supporters to turn the inevitable court trials around so as to put the regime on trial is a great responsibility. People really will go to jail. And although such a method of struggle is extremely effective, but experience shows that thousands and even tens of thousands may pass through the jails until the moment of the conducting of reforms. Would you yourself be capable of calling people to lawful forms of protest, knowing how the judicial/law-enforcement system is going to function in relation to them?

Ksenia Sobchak: It seems to me the most effective way to induce people to struggle for their rights is to show by one’s personal example. And that is what I’m doing. I try not to be afraid and to go forward and I call people to follow me.

After all, I truly have lost much on this path. In so doing, I don’t consider myself an accidental victim who “got sucked into history” through lack of knowledge or lack of experience. On the contrary, I realised perfectly well how an attempt to swim against the current usually ends in our state. What is being spoken of, by the way, is not only pressure on the part of those against whom I began to make appearances. I understood likewise that few would assess my aspirations and that I would nevertheless be a “stranger among my own” All these stock phrases – “Putin’s goddaughter”, “symbol of glamour” – will still be pursuing me for a long time to come.

But I have always believed that deeds must be performed proceeding from one’s own understanding of good and evil, and not for the sake of others’ assessments. It is precisely for this reason that I began my struggle and am calling on people to join me. However, having said that, I don’t want to lie either: the risks are great, but success is not guaranteed.

12

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: It is an irrefutable fact that corruption has encompassed a significant part of the machinery of state and the security structures. This is more than a million people (not counting the downstream corruption among state-sector employees). How do you intend to fight this? What to do with the people? After all, hundreds of thousands of houses have been built with iniquitous incomes and millions of family members of corruptioneers are living on this money…

Ksenia Sobchak: I wouldn’t want to get into a discussion of what is going to be “after the triumphal victory of democracy”. It seems to me that it’s important to come to a general understanding of how it’s imperative to reorganise the political system. However, presenting themselves as a more urgent topic are the scenarios of a peaceful transformation from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one.

The main thing that is still missing is allies on the other side of the Kremlin fence; people from the power who have become aware of the fatality of today’s course and are prepared to promote democratic reforms. But in order to find such allies, we need to stop browbeating representatives of the elites and replace the aggressive rhetoric with a more moderate one. After all, a split in the elites is not taking place yet in large part because many people possessing money and influence are afraid of being hounded by the future power.

And the same thing in relations with business. It is imperative to stop giving entrepreneurs nightmares with slogans whose sense comes down to the notorious “take away and divide up”. None of the serious people would want such an alternative even for today’s corrupt regime.

13

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Many highly-placed figures of the regime have committed and are still going to commit grave criminal offences and understand the entire risk of the liability lying ahead. What kind of compromise would you see between fairness and political expediency so as to avoid a sharp confrontation?

Ksenia Sobchak: My opinion consists of the notion that people who are directly involved in political repressions must be subjected to lustration: first and foremost, employees of the special services and centres for counteracting extremism. To subject a person to persecution merely because he’s got a “United Russia” party card lying in his pocket seems inadmissible to me. The last thing we need is another witch hunt.

14

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: What actions of opponents and your new acquaintances would you not be able to forgive?

Ksenia Sobchak: The thesis “The end justifies the means” is unacceptable for me. Therefore I would never forgive my colleagues for unleashing a civil war, no matter what principles of political expediency were used to justify this. Being hungry for power and being hungry for justice – these are different things. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that the one often very deftly supplants the other for opposition politicians.

Besides that, I do not consider it admissible to place one’s stakes on populism, when the opposition advances impracticable slogans. The power often manipulates society’s consciousness, but we don’t need to become like it ourselves in this.

15

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Today the opposition is sufficiently influential in Moscow, but not beyond its city limits. The traditionally evolved forms of verbal and visual propaganda are obviously not achieving success. People are awaiting actions and real changes, successes in the struggle for their social rights. What can you propose as a guru and a professional of the media world?

Ksenia Sobchak: From my point of view, the most promising method of communication with masses of people (both in the capital and beyond its city limits) is the internet. I understand that this thesis is vulnerable to criticism: for now, our fellow citizens are using the internet more as an entertainment medium than as a source of information, and what is more, something on the order of sixty percent of Russians, according to the surveys of “Levada”, don’t have any idea whatsoever of what the internet is and how it works. However, the situation is changing, and as the World Wide Web inevitably spreads people will begin, I hope, to perceive of the internet specifically as a source of independent information.

Now, as concerns social changes, the opposition is hardly likely to be able to offer people reforms until such a time as it becomes the power and gets the levers for governing the state. At the given stage, we can and must offer society an alternative to what the government is doing – both in the social sphere and in the economic. Moreover, the alternative should not come down to slogans; our task is to formulate substantive professional projects.

16

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Earlier you had supposed that there are “rules of the game” with the power and that the power only goes after “violators of the convention”. Do you consider yourself and those who think like you “violators of the convention”? If yes, then when and why did you “sign” this convention? Why did you violate it? If no – why is the power going after “non-violators”, what do you think?

Ksenia Sobchak: The main thing is not what I consider. The main thing is that in the Kremlin they obviously consider me a violator of this same tacit convention. The problem is precisely in its informal character. After all, I understood perfectly well that certain rules of the political game exist. And it seemed to me that I was acting within their framework – including in that moment when I was appearing at the protest demonstrations. However, it became clear that the power sees the space for political manoeuvre much more narrowly.

Such a problem – a conflict of different understandings of the rules – always arises when the power aspires to live not by laws, but by understandings. I suspect that you too suffered precisely because of this. I’ve read your book, written together with Natalia Gevorkyan. It seems to me that this is precisely what you had in mind when you wrote that you don’t entirely understand what specifically became the reason for the brutal attack on you. From the side it seemed that Putin had built up more or less understandable rules for the interrelation of power and business. Their essence, as it seems to me, came down to a simple thesis: big business gets the opportunity to earn money and to enjoy the benevolence of the state, but in exchange for this it gives up participating in the political process. I deem these rules were understandable to you as well, but you and Putin probably diverged in your understanding of the details of this agreement.

But now, the Kremlin in actual fact considers any person (or group of people) who lays claim to power to be a violator of the “convention”. The power doesn’t stand on ceremony with such people. But if people don’t lay claim to real participation in opposition politics (we are not taking into account the phoney opposition like the parliamentary parties), then they can count on a perfectly free existence in Russia.

17

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: A completely delicate question. I had occasion to speak with your father, but you probably know him like nobody else does. How did he see our country back in the faraway nineties and what path would our country have taken if it was not Boris Yeltsin, but your father, who had become chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in 1990 and the first president of Russia in 1991?

Ksenia Sobchak: History, fortunately or unfortunately, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. One thing I do know for sure: my father was a committed democrat and for him the value of institutions of power by the people was absolute. He did not start “inflating” the results of elections in Petersburg with the help of the administrative resource and honestly admitted defeat, even though he ceded just half a percent to Yakovlev. Nor could anyone reproach my father for oppressing freedom of speech: even such a consistent opponent of his as Alexander Nevzorov admitted this publicly.

Of course, my father never had enough management experience, all the more so given that the post-Soviet devastation demanded special crisis management skills. But that being said, he was a responsible person and politician. I can say with confidence that my father would not allow the war in Chechnya, of which he was a critic.

Believe me, your question disturbs me as well. I would love to be able to talk with my father today about what’s going on with Russia and to find out his opinion.