BORIS KAGARLITSKY, MOSCOW
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY AND JOHN TALBOT?
The English military leader John Talbot died at the Battle of Castillon, because he had entered the battlefield wearing no armor. Sir John understood quite well, what could be caused by such a neglect of own safety, but he had no choice. Shortly before that, when he was released from captivity, he promised “never to wear armor against the French King again.”
I mentioned this medieval story in relation to the current debates about the possible release of Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. President Dmitry Medvedev did not exclude it, but specified: in accordance with general practice. And what a general practice could be here?
The supporters of Khodorkovsky claim him to be a political prisoner. His adversaries call him delinquent and thief. I can agree with both sides. I suppose that he can be called a political prisoner, but not a prisoner of confidence. The prisoners of confidence are the people, who are jailed by the regime because of their principles and ideas, which are opposite to the authorities’ ones. In the case of Khodorkovsky the situation is definitely not the same. He found himself in prison just because he had shared the basic principles of the current order in Russia.
First of all, it is the faith in that the power and the money should be indivisible, that the ruling clique should consist of the elite, which would control stupid masses through the media and corrupt parliamentarians. This view of politics is shared by both sides in the struggle for power.
Both the government and its adversaries did their best to preserve the results of privatization. Both aimed at concentrating the power in their hands by pushing aside their opponents and not thinking about the moral aspect too much.
It was exactly because the directors of YUKOS corporation did not differ from the Kremlin inhabitants, the ruling clique considered them to be really dangerous. And had used the strict measures.
Khodorkovsky is a political prisoner only in the sense, which could have been attributed to the princes jailed in Bastille and Tower after they had failed plots.
The problem is not in whether Khodorkovsky's sentence is correct from the legal point of view, but in the fact that the Russian authorities tried to formalize a conflict in the categories of the contemporary law while this conflict doesn't fit democratic political standards by definition. When the struggle without any rules goes on, it is senseless to appeal to the legal regulations post factum. We see here not a battle of the principles and the ideas, but a struggle for power in the most cynical and transparent form. It is impossible to find a rightful decision of a situation with no right sides at all. And we are - the bondmen of the Russian State – indifferent to the correctness of a winner or loser’s position from the legal point of view.
But the winner has a right not only to execute, but to spare. That’s what President Medvedev mentioned about not long ago. And he was absolutely right in everything, but the reference to the equality of all citizens which has nothing to do with this case. Khodorkovsky and his colleagues from YUKOS have the completely different rights from the millions of Russians, who failed to steal some oil fields, steel mills, or at least a coal mine of a reasonable size.
Khodorkovsky was jailed by the monarch’s will, and only this will can release him. However, the absolute ruler is guided by the reasons of his own security and reason d'etat when making such a decision.
When the medieval kings released their hostages form the prisons, they usually made them swear not to continue struggle. Such vows were maintained far from always. But the true knights regarded them seriously, as the story of poor Talbot shows. But do the YUKOS’ figurants and their foes look like the heroes of the knight novels? I can’t image Medvedev releasing Khodorkovsky under the word of honor!
The deception and the betrayal are the normal for the contemporary Russian elite. That’s why I would not hope for any gratitude or loyalty from the pardoned if I were one of the Kremlin clique.
Unfortunately, I could not advise Khodorkovsky to trust in the nobleness of his current jailors either.
Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
July 4, 2008
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