I awoke this morning to the news of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s (42 years old) conviction to 9 years in jail for 6 charges including tax evasion, embezzlement, and other financial indiscretions. He ranks at the top of the class of post-Soviet Russian oligarchs with a net worth over $8 billion. His true guilt stems from bankrolling soviet opposition to Putin. Was it any surprise then that a court found him guilty of crimes which he committed in cahoots with the same occupants of the Kremlin?
What a damper to the simplistically optimistic assertions of Sharansky who wrote: “Compared to a Soviet Union in which millions worked for the KGB, millions were in prison, tens of millions lost their lives, and hundreds of millions lived in fear, present day Russia is a bastion of freedom,” page 28. For an author who seems to see no compromise in the pursuit of freedom and democracy, that assertion is a chilling relapse to realistic shades of grey which pervade political reality. However, when a “democracy” is built on a political entente between oligarchs and an oppressive political leadership to respect and steer clear of each others’ spheres, how sustainable can that democracy actually be? Basic question, would anyone even consider Russia a democracy?
In the shadow of today’s headline, however, remains... the uncertain story of Vladimir Guzinsky (media magnate, chased around the world for daring to oppose Yeltsin and later, Putin)…the more certain allegiance of Roman Abramovic (who has stealthily moved into investment in soccer and maintained close ties with Putin’s chief of staff Alexander Voloshin)…the escaped Boris Berezovsky (now staging an Anti-Putin campaign from exile)…the silent Oleg Deripaska (who maintains a low key business role at the helm of Russian aluminum exports.
Okay considering time already spent, Khodorkovsky will spend approx. 7.5 years in jail. However, Russia is fashioning itself into a post-polar bastion of personality driven politics and economics in the face of the declining well-being of its populations.
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