The Horror of the Khodorkovsky Trial

There is something horrifying about the guilty verdict of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

His ascetic face, determined but human, almost seems that of a martyr. His monk’s glasses and black coat. His jaw set for the worst that Russia’s Putin can deal him.

We remember the days of Stalin’s show trials. The ludicrous lawyers and judges pronouncing absurdities as the helpless defendants looked on, half dead because of cold and hunger and “soft” torture that left only psychological marks.

The horror is mixed with disbelief. How could we have been so duped by Putin and his road show of dogs, judo, smiles and promises of Russia’s democratic future?

How could we have believed that the Soviet apparatchik simply dissolved into nothingness at the moment when Boris Yeltsin stood atop the tank defiantly facing the Russian White House. It all seemed so real then, but 1991 is long ago and far away.

Yeltsin held Russia together while the country worked through the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But, it took Vladimir Putin to put Russia back together - in the old Soviet mold of persecutions, government by cliques, and favors only for those who first give favors to the elite - all papered over with the oligarchic industrial model that puts most private power in the hands of people whose success depends on their continuing support of Putin and his apparatchik. The oligarchs are the public face of the private control of Russia by Vladimir Putin and his Soviet-style government.

But, Khodorkovsky, although an oligarch, began to separate himself from Putin’s regime. He supported political parties, funded educational enterprises, and dared to criticize the Russian state for its abuse of power and its overriding control of the political process. He even tried to open his business by applying western transparency standards.

For this, he has found himself for the last five years in a Russian prison, better than Soviet era prisons, but nonetheless a prison, and for what? For trying to modernize Russia.    

Russian President, Mikhail Medvedev, says he wants to democratize Russia’s legal system. He says this, but he, too, is under Putin’s control. If Medvedev has, or indeed wants, independent political power, he has yet to show it.  

Putin’s Foreign Minister says of the Khodorkovsky trial : "Attempts to exert pressure on the court are unacceptable. We expect everyone to mind his own business, both at home and in the international arena."

And because the West wants to work with Russia and Putin, it will make the usual statements - Secretary of State Clinton and the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have already called the Khodorkovsky trial result unacceptable - but will, in all probability, return to business as usual soon enough.

In reality, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has challenged the basis of Putin’s Russian state, and he will continue to do so, from jail or free, until he sets Russia on the path to being a modern state or he is silenced permanently. He knows the game he is playing and he has acknowledged the possible consequences : "I am ready to die in jail."

Meanwhile, yesterday there was a post on a popular Russian Twitter feed that read, "Khodorkovsky is the name of the next Russian president."

We should, I suppose, at least acknowledge that in Stalin’s Soviet Union, that would never have happened, because his trial stands to make of Mr. Khodorkovsky an undying popular symbol of the hopes of the Russian people. Dare we think that Mr. Khodorkovsky’s cause will ultimately be victorious?