A left turn in the fate of Russia is as necessary as it is inevitable. Mikhail Khodorkovsky More Quotes by Mikhail Khodorkovsky More Quotes From Mikhail Khodorkovsky I established my bank in 1988. Mikhail Khodorkovsky I have always defended my convictions and what I believed to be the truth. Mikhail Khodorkovsky conviction There are people who are at fault for one or another problem. These people are very avaricious and self-serving. They're not doing it just to do it; they're doing it for the money. That money, they keep here. When you say, "We're going to find these people, these guilty people, the ones who are not only breaking laws but are also hurting their own fellow country people," and you say, "We're going to punish them, specifically, that's a step in the right direction." Mikhail Khodorkovsky hurtcountrypeople By equating Putin and Russia, you are creating a situation that's the opposite of what you would like to have happen. Mikhail Khodorkovsky situation People take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky reallongpeople Part of the people here are interested in the same thing that Putin is interested in: Putin wants to have America as an enemy. Part of Americans want to have Russia as an enemy. It's advantageous. The other part of the people are just ordinary people. And these people project onto big objects the kind of relations that they have with small objects in their everyday lives. Mikhail Khodorkovsky everydaypeopleenemy People expect some kinds of decisions from Putin that will help them see their own future. A significant part of the people that he relies on are quite content with him telling them that nothing is going to change. But that part of the elite that does want to see some changes and improvements are going to expect him to, in his next term, bring Russia back into the club of the great powers. Mikhail Khodorkovsky decisionhelpingpeople Putin doesn't conduct elections in the Western sense of elections. This is more accurately probably described as a plebiscite, where people are supposed to express their support for him. The Russian system is not unique in this respect, but it is rather interesting. Here, in the West, the impression that people have is that Putin runs the whole country. This is not so, at all. To a certain extent, you could say that he runs the Kremlin, and this means that it's, in some situations, hard to tell whether it's him running the Kremlin, or the people around him running him. Mikhail Khodorkovsky runningmeancountry It's a very erroneous strategy to try to push the Russian opposition to unite. First of all, the opposition is addressing different parts of Russian society that have differing points of view. And besides, a united opposition is a nice big target that the authorities have a much easier time fighting. And besides, resisting an authoritarian regime with an authoritarian opposition merely means that, in the event of victory, you're just doing yet another round of the same old, same old. Mikhail Khodorkovsky nicefightingmean Navalny is doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Gudkov is a doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Yabloko, or more accurately, some of the leaders of the Yabloko party, are doing a very important job in their segment of the population, people such as Schlosberg. And our organization Open Russia is also doing important work with its segment of society, because those people who are focused on us, our segment, they're not part of those other segments. Mikhail Khodorkovsky partyleaderpeople Every politician deep inside is authoritarian. If the person doesn't have ambition, that's not a politician. Society needs to put every ambitious, every effective politician into such a position that it helps - that this person helps improve society. That's why I'm always talking about need to change the system rather than should we go with Navalny or Gudkov or Yavlinsky or Khodorkovsky. We all have our ambitions. We're all ambitious people. Mikhail Khodorkovsky ambitiousambitionpeople If we talk about changes of power in Russia, that has occurred several times in the past century. After Stalin came Khrushchev, who implemented his legacy quite radically, one could say. But there was no blood, nonetheless. After Brezhnev came Gorbachev. I'm not talking about the ones who were in power for only a short period of time. Gorbachev, too, left a very radical legacy. Mikhail Khodorkovsky radicallegacypast Putin regards me as the most dangerous person, and when they were releasing me from jail, the only condition was that I leave the country. And when they did push me out of the country, to make sure that I wouldn't come back, they opened up a criminal case against me - a new one. Mikhail Khodorkovsky dangerouscountry I want the people who were involved in this tragedy to be interrogated and charged, we believe that the Russian authorities should do this. They have every opportunity to interrogate people in Russia and also people in the CAR. Mikhail Khodorkovsky world The decay had entered its final stage. Mikhail Khodorkovsky top-news I expect that the money will be spent on projects that will benefit Russian society. Mikhail Khodorkovsky company-news What the next page holds is up to each and every one of us. Mikhail Khodorkovsky world I think that my country doesn't deserve a new era of authoritarianism, but at the same time, I don't want a revolution. Mikhail Khodorkovsky top-news This demonstration of power, indifferent to the law, is highly dangerous. Mikhail Khodorkovsky demonstrationdangerouspowerlaw As for the company, I did all I could from the very outset of this affair to remove Yukos and its employees from danger. Mikhail Khodorkovsky employeesverycompanydanger
