COMMENTARY
by Gordon Hahn
Russia’s gradual reform agenda, its integration into Western life and institutions, and the reputations of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin all demand a substantial change in the policy regarding imprisoning oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovskii and his associate Platon Lebedev. In addition, any state that contends to be a country ruled by laws and not by men requires just and merciful execution of the law, and in this case both justice and mercy. This is always part of a democratic legal system, and they have yet to be served by Russia’s politicized judicial process. Russian law provides measures that would allow the political authorities to redress the injustice, while honoring the procedural requirements of rule of law state.
President Medvedev himself sparked hope that a change in Kremlin policy might be forthcoming during his first major press conference last month where he acknowledged that Khodorkovskii presented no danger to society. Although Medvedev’s statement was prompted by a journalist’s question, he appeared ready for it, instantly issuing an uncharacteristically short and precise answer. It was if he had been waiting for the question and the journalist had been put up to posing it. The timing seemed significant, coming at a time when Khodorkovskii’s lawyers were preparing to apply for conditional early parole, about which Medvedev certainly would have known.
Days later, the growing glasnost’ on even state-run media, a general feature of Medvedev’s thaw, suddenly changed to state media coverage of Khodorkovskii and his appeal for a pardon. Both NTV and Rossiya channels carried long and surprisingly open coverage of Khodorkovskii on prime time news programs.
On NTV, “there is one truth -¬ the attitude toward the one whose name shouldn’t be mentioned has been changing,” the ‘Central Television’ program’s host Vadim Takmenev noted in an eight-minute report on Khodorkovsky. “It’s as if something has changed,” Takmenev added. (Alexandra Odynova, “Signaling Thaw, Khodorkovsky Pops Up on State TV,” Moscow Times, 31 May 2011). The Rossiya channel included video of Khordorkovskii’s statement to the court, including his account of the absurdity of the charges brought against him. This was a first time this had been done since 2003 (Yan Gordeev, “V sudbe Khodorkovskogo nastupili teleperemeny,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 31 May 2011). All this looked to be orchestrated.
The media policy change came after more bad reports emerged that capital flight from Russia was accelerating, despite Medvedev’s steps to liberalize a number of aspects of the regime, including many related to investors’ perceptions that Russia would be a safe place to do business. Russia’s modernization and integration with the West requires just the oppositie – confidence in the rule of law and massive foreign direct investment in its economy. Without a real policy change, the tandem’s reform process will lag and could be aborted. Further, Russia’s full rapprochement and integration with the West will be impossible, and Medvedev’s reputation as a reformer and Putin’s bitter, but necessary, medicine when Russia was spinning out of control in 1999, will be destroyed.
This is not to say the Khodorkovskii deserves the status of champion of democracy and the veritable freedom fighter that Western, in particular U.S. mainstream media, have laid upon him, or that he is innocent of any crimes––he is not. Rather, the early release or at least a drastic reduction in Khodorkovskii’s and Lebedev’s remaining prison terms is required both for Russia to move beyond the legacy of the 1990s and to restore a balance in justice connected with this tortured and drawn out case.
For Russia, such a step will increase investor confidence and signal that investor and property rights as well as the rule of law will begin to be honored and that the era of state predation and corrupt government-business links is coming to an end. This, along with other measures the tandem has been taking, and is planning to expand in the future, should be enough to give an immediate boost to direct foreign investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking, which are crucial for Russia’s economic, social, and political modernization.
Also, there are several, objective or non-political reasons which justify an early release for Khodorkovskii and Lebedev. First, they have served almost 8 years of their 13-year sentence already. Second, even as European Courts of Human Rights refused to characterize their prosecutions as politically motivated, it noted that the conditions of their detention, pre-trial review, and trial violated their human rights. Thus, in addition to following through on President Medvedev’s promised to honor the findings of the international court in general, these violations constitute legitimate mitigation for much of what remains of the defendants’ terms of deprivation of freedom. Third, Khodorkovskii and Lebedev were two among tens of other major and lesser oligarchs, who obtained their property illegally or engaged in other forms of criminal activity, almost all of whom went unpunished. A general criminal amnesty with major fines and confiscations of property for resale applied equally across the board would have been a better way for Putin to have gone in reining in the oligarchs, but this is hindsight. Finally, Medvedev’s recent legal reforms decriminalizing white collar crimes such as tax evasion, which Khodorkovskii and Lebedev were convicted for in their first trial, further justifies a sentence reduction.
But most importantly perhaps, with the release from prison of Khodorkovskii and Lebedev, the exceedingly sad and ugly chapter in modern Russian history represented by the 1990s’ nomenklatura privatization bacchanlia can be laid to rest, and the job of building a truly free, constitutionally democratic and prosperous Russia can be revitalized by greatly needed new vigor.
The author appears to admit that this guy is a crook. However, he insists that the convicted thief must be set free. Why? Money talks, I guess.
Posted by: Rojo | July 16, 2011 at 02:57 PM