Russian online TV channel, Rain, has launched a new section on its website called “Letters About the Motherland”, which will publish weekly blogs by a variety of authors on the past, present, and future of Russia.

The first author published on the site was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. A translation of Khodorkovsky’s post can be read below:

Among the events of the past few weeks and days, it is imperative that we see the interconnection between the appearances of The Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika in the Federation Council, Vladislav Surkov in London, and the people rallying in Bolotnaya Square on May 6.

The following points are of interest:

— Chaika says: society cannot interfere in the questions discussed by the siloviki;
— Surkov says: siloviki are not always right, and the harm for the economy from their actions is sometimes greater than the benefit;
— the Bolotnaya protesters say: siloviki, we don’t believe that you’re acting in the interests of society, but in those of your bosses.

It is difficult to understand what compelled the professional jurist Chaika to make such a judicially questionable statement that society cannot interfere in the business of the siloviki, especially when the chairman of the Constitutional Court has already spoken out about the issue.

But it is far more dangerous if Mr. Chaika and his colleagues do not understand the weakness of their political position. Judging by surveys, all of the siloviki, apart from the Minister of Defence, do not have even 50 per cent of society’s support. Thus they are dependent on Putin’s rating, which is not exactly stellar.

Putin’s rating is directly dependent on the state of the economy, where the potential for growth on account of large raw materials companies has been exhausted. The capabilities of the budget are close to exhaustion. Now the hopes for growth and high-paying jobs are connected with the entrepreneurial energy of the citizenry, with small and medium business, and with the investment climate in the country.

And in such a situation, the General Prosecutor is allowing himself to not only think, but to articulate aloud: we have pressured, we are pressuring, and we will continue to pressure, and your business is to shut up and obey.

I would like to refresh everybody’s memory: we won in 1945. Walking around Russia with weapons right now are people who have been hired by us, by society, and not an army of occupation, a representative of which could allow himself to say that a defeated people should not be interfering with their running of things.

The right to determine our own fate has been paid for with lives not only in that war, but also in the famous uprisings in the camps of the gulag, about which official television has told at last. And it is not for a representative of an agency that has been responsible for more deaths in its 300-year history than all the criminals convicted with its participation to be demanding unconditional trust in himself.

To use the language of the political technologists, not weapons and not trust in the judiciary, but V. Putin’s rating is the branch upon which the entire siloviki community is sitting right now. When it comes crashing down, truncheons will not be any help.

And you will not be able to prop it up with trust in the institutions of state when you have this kind of attitude towards society.

About which, properly speaking, Bolotnaya has spoken out loud and clear once again.