(Translated and shortened by Johnson’s Russia List, #9126)

…The regime is about to start physical elimination of opponents Author: Grigori Yavlinsky, Yabloko party leader.

[The authorities had three objectives in the YUKOS affair: preventive, demonstrative, and strategic. Since none of these objectives could be achieved legitimately, the state used brute force under the cover of quasi-legal procedures. Now all the objectives have been achieved.]

… The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev is drawing to a close. The trial revealed many hidden motives – vindictiveness, jealousy, eagerness to crush others. Nearly all this has taken place.

… Something else has not. The trial has nothing to do with restoring law and order in Russia. It is a trial that creates an atmosphere of fear and legal chaos instead.

… Regardless of who is guilty of what, or what should have been done, the numbers of procedural violations have exceeded all imaginable limits.

… As for the authorities, they had three objectives: preventive, demonstrative, and strategic. Preventive: not permitting YUKOS to be acquired by foreigners. Demonstrative: to instill fear and suppress private companies, showing them who is the boss around here.

Strategic: to bring a major oil company under the control of a certain group of state officials. Since none of these objectives could be achieved legitimately, the state used brute force under the cover of quasi-legal procedures.

… Now all the objectives have been achieved. YUKOS as a company is no more. There is no longer anything for foreign corporations to buy. Russia’s private companies are duly impressed, and fear has been instilled.

… I’m not going to talk here about whether what was done is good or bad for the national economy. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev could get up to ten years behind bars. (They will probably get sentences of five to seven years.) Given the environment in Russian jails, a man like Khodorkovsky may never emerge from jail again.

… Things have gone too far. Political leaders have initiated a new phase – that of physical elimination. I repeat, all this has nothing to do with YUKOS.

… This is a war without an end. This is a war for the elimination of people from the upper echelons of business and government, former and incumbent, and the ruin of their families.

… If these wheels are set in motion, they will not stop. Repressions – revenge, new repressions – revenge again. Is it so difficult to understand that several years from now, the same treatment awaits those who are at the top nowadays? Why? Because all this is anything but legitimate. Because the whole history of our country is like this. The old Soviet elite knows it all too well. Stalin’s 20 years at the helm prove that repressions against the ruling class are endless and pointless – that everyone lives in constant fear of the future.

… Last but not least, because in the mid-1990s the state set the rules in accordance with which practically all business leaders may be called criminals.

… Imprisonment of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is just the road there, into repressions and revenge.

… A road to self-destruction for Russia.

… Do not cross the line. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev should not be jailed. They pose no danger to society. Even if they are guilty of something, their guilt is no worse than the guilt of whoever is prosecuting them and who is giving the orders. I don’t seem to recall seeing the people who are “restoring justice and promoting state interests” nowadays among demonstrators and the opposition in the Yeltsin era. Every one of them, including the man at the very top, participated actively and vigorously in what was happening in Russia in the 1990s.

… Let’s admit what we all know: the state we live in is not a state based on the rule of law. There is nothing that resembles the law in the whole Khodorkovsky situation. Institutions are much too weak to finish it off by legitimate means.

… Agreements are needed. Political class and business leaders in Russia should understand that the verdict will mark the start of physical elimination. We should learn some lessons from the past. The fates of Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, Svetlana Bakhmina, and other defendants is directly linked to the future of everyone – those who are in the Kremlin now, and those outside the Kremlin walls.

… Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin, Chubais, Zhukov, Gref, Kudrin, Alekperov, Fridman, Potanin (and perhaps some others) should meet with President Putin and work out an agreement and collective guarantees regarding no more harassment and the release of Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, Bakhmina, and other YUKOS executives.

… Needless to say, only Putin can make this decision. Let’s face it – the verdict for Khodorkovsky and others depends on Putin. The political and moral responsibility are his.

Translated by A. Ignatkin
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/default.cfm