Mikhail Khodorkovsky is scheduled to appear at the upcoming Prague Forum 2000 Conference this evening, titled “Democracy and Its Discontents: A Quarter-Century After the Iron Curtain and Tiananmen.”

“During the Velvet Revolution people used to jingle keys to show that previously locked doors were opening,” says Mikhail Khodorkovsky in regard to his participation in this year’s Forum 2000. “Almost exactly 25 years after those events it is time to evaluate the state of democracy, see how open those doors are and ask which doors in post-communist Europe still need the keys to democracy.”

This year’s conference offers a critical reflection on the period of democratic transformations over the past few decades and naturally the current situation in the Middle East, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Russia will also not be neglected.

“We are really delighted that in this context we have managed to get many important people for the panel debates, including the founder of the Open Russia Foundation Mikhail Khodorkovsky,” says the Executive Director of Forum 2000 Jakub Klepal. “Besides his appearance, with respect to Putin’s Russia, it will undoubtedly be interesting for conference visitors to hear the opinions of the Editor in Chief of the Russian opposition daily Dmitry Muratov, the Russian opposition politician Grigory Yavlinsky, and the former Czech Ambassador to Russia Petr Kolář. One of the most important themes of this year’s conference, which brings together the subject of growing extremism in Europe and the increasingly aggressive behavior of Vladimir Putin, will also be a series of events on the subject of links between the Kremlin and Europe’s extreme right parties. Besides Prague, one of these debates will also take place in cooperation with our Hungarian partners in Budapest.”

The live stream of the conference is below: