As part of a series of events to celebrate Khodorkovsky’s fiftieth birthday on June 26th, the ninth Khodorkovsky readings are taking place today in Moscow organised by “Memorial”, the Institute of the National Project “Social Contract” and the Foundation “Indem.”

The readings aim to foster an open discussion of conceptual issues related to the further development of Russia, such as political, social and economic alternatives, likely future scenarios, bifurcation and the comparison of different images of the future. The readings are held with the participation of specialists of various professions including economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and lawyers.

The title for today’s readings is “State and Society 2013” and the program includes three sessions;

Session I: Putinism’s economic system
Session II: The Evolution of the regime: the tightening of control over society
Session III: Mikhail Khodorkovsky: The experience of resistance (starts at 16:30 Moscow time)

Live stream of the Readings

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s greeting to the participants of the Ninth Khodorkovsky Readings

Dear friends!

Over 10 years have passed since my speech at the meeting between President Putin and Russian industrialists and entrepreneurs, marking the start of the “Yukos” affair. At that time, I talked about systemic corruption as a serious obstacle to economic development.

Since then, the price of oil has increased five times and the scale of corrupt exemptions from the economy – ten times. Rosneft took over the shattered Yukos and continued almost all of our projects, but with a tenfold increase in the costs of production.

Today, as a result of current governance, the pace of Russia’s economic growth is falling below the critical level of 4%; the declared fight against corruption and embezzlement of public funds is not showing any clear results, but nor could it, given that it is the backbone of the current regime.

However, due to the continuously high prices of natural resources, a lot of people in Russia do live better than they did in past decades, and, en masse, are not willing to risk their current relative prosperity for future gain. It is clear that conscience, dignity, and political freedoms, while rising up the list of their priorities, are still not at the top of it.

The government cannot afford to reduce the growth in citizen’s prosperity in order to avoid the protests. At the same time, it cannot maintain the pace of the growth (due to ineffective management) or improve management efficiency (because that would require real political competition, which could lead to a change of government). Therefore, the answer to the challenge of our time has become the repression of NGO’s, the media and political activists.

In such a situation, to support political prisoners, human rights activities, and the engineering of an alternative vision of a country’s development requires a lot of courage; and the recent pressure put on the experts working on behalf of the President proves that this is not just words.

I express my deep gratitude to all of you who are consistently demonstrating to our fellow citizens the presence of other values and goals – the values of modern civil society and true patriotism, the patriotism that urges to give, to help, and to act in the interest of the future of our country and our people.

Good luck to you.

Sincerely,

Mikhail Khodorkovsky