From the correspondence of the editorial staff

with convict of the FKU IK-7 of the UFSIN for the Republic
of Karelia, town of Segzha, M.B. Khodorkovsky

He is
simply afraid
of competition
When Putin says that he does not betray his own,
this is a fear of offending the siloviki who are close to him
From a letter of the editorial staff to the FKU IK-7
of the UFSIN for the Republic of Karelia,
town of Segzha:
Dear Mikhail Borisovich, We anxiously await your new lecture on the nationality question:
the readers are pestering us, we you, counting on your, by Brodskys determination, free time in a
restricted space. The first variant of the text was good. Maybe well just stick with it?
D. Muratov.
P.S. Mikhail Borisovich, another question. Which, in your view, demands of the opposition,
demands of Bolotnaya Square, do you share? And who of the candidates for president would you be
prepared to single out? (the letter was sent and the response to it received prior to the removal of G.
Yavlinsky from the elections).
Letter from the town of Segzha:
Dear Dmitry,
I send you greetings and regretfully report that my lecture on Liberalism and the nationality
question has disappeared somewhere in the bowels of our colony. If they dont find it Ill rewrite
it.
At first glance it might seem that Putins strategists and I are thinking remarkably alike. If my
lawyers show you the drafts youll be amazed.
1

As we remember from the examples of a series of my articles on modernisation, questions of

logistics, without a doubt, play a first-order significance in my situation. However even in conditions of
the absence of real-time access to the mass information media the main difference between me and the
opponents consists of the fact that I, having taken this model further in my thought, have rewritten the
article anew, whilst they have remained with the old version.
Incidentally, now I wanted to write to you about another topic, albeit a closely related one.
In his articles and public appearances, Putin voices a large quantity of diverse thoughts on account of the
development of the country and the state.
Many of them are not suitable, inasmuch as the result of their implementation has long been
known to specialists (for example, management in hands-on mode, the power vertical etc.). Some are
appropriate, and occasionally even useful.
Furthermore, theoretically the liberal opposition could even agree to implement much of what
hes spoken.
So wheres the problem?
Why is Putin allowing his own proposals to get talked into the ground?
Why is he so obviously not managing to accomplish the things he writes about?
To the deep regret of our current political elite, state administration this is a science with its
own laws, and not a talking shop for palace political scientists.
To think up a new model for running the country, one that is not known to science, but at the
same time would be workable, is a task beyond the strength of even a much stronger team than the one
that the current premier has at his disposal.
In such a manner, everything that they think of in the realm of state-building, either will not work,
or has been known for a long time already.
It is also known that an eclectic array of methods of state administration cobbled together from
various systems not only does not create a new system, it is simply non-functional. Even if you call it
sovereign democracy.
Therefore any perfectly decent Putinite undertaking like, for example, the strengthening of the
rule-of-law state (let us note that Putin consciously strove for all 12 years to use the term dictatorship of
the law, and not rule-of-law state), the fight with corruption or the elaboration and conducting of an
appropriate nationalities policy either does not work, or requires that the foundations of the regime be
changed for its implementation.
In such a manner, he declares something, starts doing it, and then runs headlong into the problem
of the arising of real political competition. Something for which he turns out to be not ready at all.
As a result, Putin gets scared and takes all the guts out of even his own initiatives.
I am not even looking now at the multitude of instances when these same initiatives are torpedoed
by the bureaucratic milieu inasmuch as they enter into contradiction with the interests of that same milieu.
What can we await as the result of all this after the elections?
From all appearances, Putin has already come to the conclusion that his principal support could
be the siloviki structures, as well as individual national republics. It is precisely this that has given rise to
the radical rises in pay in the police and other analogous agencies, it is precisely for this reason that littlecontrollable federal transfers are being consciously implemented.
Apparently, such a policy will continue, although it does not in the least guarantee the readiness
of even these people to stand up and be prepared to take a bullet for a regime that society is dissatisfied
with. To add to that, the many-fold gap that is arising in the remuneration of labour of civil servants
(including the siloviki) and all the other the people who are paid out of the state budget (including
workers of non-raw-material state enterprises, teachers, public-utilities workers etc.) is going to give rise
to serious dissatisfaction in these strata of society, disposed as they are towards a constant increase in the
level of their well-being.
2

From his side, it may even seem to Vladimir Putin that he is undertaking efforts to improve
relations with the middle class (whose growing numerical strength is becoming a serious electoral factor
with each passing year, even with each passing month).
However, our future president does not desire to offend his siloviki milieu, or, to use his own
terminology, he does not betray his own, no matter how ineffective they may be. Even more important
he is afraid of real political competition. As a result his steps are going to be merely an attempt to
confuse people.
The literacy of these people, which is underestimated by the power, will render such a scenario,
so habitual for Putin, ineffective. And then hell be astonished as to why the disgruntled burghers dont
understand him and dont accept him.
In general, by the autumn of 2012, the very latest by the spring of 2013, the power is going to
switch over to the familiar mechanism of putting out fires by pouring money at them, and surgical-strike
repressions against the opposition.
Such an unsustainable situation could hold out for a year, or even two, until an unexpected crisis
puts an end to it.
Speaking about the tactic of the new opposition, I deem that the demand for re-elections of
parliament in a year or a year and a half after 4 December 2011 is right. The country needs a total and
honestly elected parliament, and it must without fail be a legitimate one.
The changes proposed to electoral legislation could be just a ploy aimed at transforming URs
30% into a parliamentary majority.
Standing as a separate question is the lack of understanding by the power of the essence of the
relations between the federal centre and the regions and the attempt connected with this lack of
understanding to take all the guts out of the resurrected idea of introducing direct gubernatorial elections
by way of retaining the so-called presidential filter.
Such a thing must not be allowed, inasmuch as such tricks is going to be taken by society with
even greater irritation, and this means they will undermine the possibility of constructive dialogue within
society.
When we speak of the possibility of a alliance of the liberals with the nationalists it is
important to understand just what nationalism is. If in the given situation we are speaking of
chauvinists or even more so of nazis, championing the idea of ethnic superiority, then here no alliance is
possible for any normal person.
Our grandfathers expressed themselves quite unequivocally in 1945 with respect to this question.
But if nationalists this is those who champion the idea of the right of a nation to self-determination, the
equality of the rights of nations within the framework of a single state (including the right of ethnic
Russians to self-administration and cultural distinctiveness), then I dont see anything sinister in an
alliance with such people.
I should note: it is precisely thus that nationalism is understood by European political science, it
is precisely such nationalism that has already walked arm in arm with liberalism in the period of the
collapse of the colonial empires and during the times of the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe at the
end of the 80s beginning of the 90s of the last century.
For a liberal one thing is important human rights are primary, inalienable and not subject to
substitution by any surrogate.
The elections of the president in March this is a struggle of symbols, and not real elections by
the people of their guarantor of the Constitution.
It is important to strive to attain the conducting of honest elections.
It is important to attain the conducting of a second round.
It is important to show which way we want to go, inasmuch as the main thing will be what
comes after the elections.
3

For me Grigory Yavlinsky would be a good symbol. The rest of the candidates need to
demonstrate in the time that remains which way they are symbols of. This includes Prokhorov, and
Mironov, and Zyuganov.
With deep respect,
MBK
Letter from the editorial office: Dear Mikhail Borisovich, There is much talk amongst
politicians about your, Platon Leonidovichs and the Yukosites release. In my opinion, there is
already a rivalry going on for first place in this question. What is your own attitude towards the fact
that you have become a resource in the pre-election race?
Respectfully, D.M.,
Novaya.
P.S.

...Not only
my own fate!
Letter from the town of Segzha: With understandable interest, perhaps somewhat
belatedly, I familiarised myself with a fragment of President Dmitry Medvedevs talk with the students of
the MGU [Moscow State University] faculty of journalism that concerned me personally. I likewise read
the opinion of my lawyers, other jurists and human rights advocates on account of the possibility of a
pardon and my reaction to such a possibility. Its all very informative.
I thank the unindifferent young people for the attention to my fate.
I thank President Medvedev for the expression of empathy and the thoroughly expected answer.
I thank the Presidential Expert Council which, perhaps, has made the existence of legal flaws in
the Khamovnichesky court verdict more understandable.
Without a doubt, I am going to be using all the opportunities afforded by the judicial system for
getting a legally just decision, despite the profoundest doubts in its ability to cleanse the case of the
political component on its own.
In this sense the amnesty recommended by the Presidential Council, not ruling out the
conducting at the same time of painstaking work with respect to changing the established practice
of the application of the law, seems to me to be the most correct approach to the problem, on the
resolution of which depends not only my own fate, but also the lot of a multitude of people who
have fallen into the grindstone of a depraved system.