In the third installment of his public lecture series for Novaya Gazeta, Mikhail Khodorkovsky argues that Russia’s political culture has become stalled in transit between an empire and a nation state, requiring a reconciliation and meeting of minds between nationalists and liberals:

He writes, “The resolution of the nationality question in Russia in the strategic, global perspective is possible only within the framework of the construction of a truly democratic state; that is, a genuine nation-state, in which a really functioning system of separation of powers allows the interests of the ethnic-Russian nation to be flexibly protected without infringing on the rights of other nationalities.”

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