The destruction of YUKOS is nearing its finale. I did my best to avert a situation where the government’s dislike of me personally would affect the company’s minority stockholders, employees, and the country in general.

Six months ago, I offered to sell my stake and thus pay off claims against the corporation. But the authorities chose a different method. They chose to enforce a selective application of law, the retroactive introduction and use of legal norms and their interpretations, not to mention the trampling of the business community’s early trust in the arbitration courts and the government as a whole.

The well-coordinated and totally unscrupulous actions of the tax, law-enforcement and judiciary agencies (as well as corporations beating around the government), and the pressure on YUKOS managers and employees whose only guilt was that they reported to Khodorkovsky, leaves not a trace of doubt that the entire affair was plotted on contract. Hundreds of people have been interrogated, and many have been charged with incredible accusations. Some of the people, including women, are being kept in jail. What for? A clear message is being sent: don’t meddle with the wrecking of YUKOS, and, furthermore, provide more damaging information about Khodorkovsky. 

It is clear as daylight that the YUKOS affair involves more than just economic interests since the methods chosen to satisfy them deal a blow to the government’s credibility and the national economy, while those who engineered the campaign seem to ignore such trifles.

Today, the problem is not the fate of YUKOS – its rescue seems improbable. Another problem is looming large. It is the lessons that the country and society will draw from the YUKOS story where the final chord appeared to be the most senseless and destructive for the country’s economy since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

THE TYRANNY OF PROPERTY

Over the past twelve months, the U.S. $15 billion of YUKOS assets that Forbes magazine wrote about have declined to almost zero, and will continue to shrink until it finally does hit zero. I realized from the very beginning that things would turn out that way, and I requested that the corporation and its minority stockholders would be unaffected. I felt personal responsibility for the 150,000 employees and their 500,000 family members, not to mention the 30 million people who live in the rural and urban areas that depend on the consistent operation of YUKOS’ enterprises.

I feel bad about the tens of thousands of YUKOS’ stockholders who believed at one time that they could entrust their money to Khodorkovsky and his team.
Until recently, we had every right to say that their trust was justified. When my team joined YUKOS in 1995, the company was losing money and it had a six-month wage debt and overdue liabilities exceeding U.S. $3 billion. YUKOS had operations in only nine Russian regions; its output of crude totaled 40 million tons a year and was declining.

In 2003, the YUKOS network embraced 50 Russian regions, while its production volume reached 80 million tons a year, with a consistent tendency for further growth. The company paid reliable and large wages – up to 7,000 rubles in the European part of Russia and up to 30,000 rubles in Siberia. YUKOS was Russia’s second biggest taxpayer in the country, yielding only to Gazprom. Its tax payments accounted for 5 percent of the federal budget revenue.

I will refrain here from describing the audacious inventiveness of the people who came out with YUKOS’ debts (according to the Russian Tax Ministry, YUKOS was expected to pay more in taxes than it received in gross profit). These nasty historical jokes will one day become instances in textbooks on tax law – they have proven that oil production in Russia is unprofitable. They have also proven that the bureaucrats will stop short of nothing to repartition property.
Many will be surprised to discover that the loss of my property will not cause me unbearable pain.

Like many other convicts, known or unknown, I must extend my thanks to prison. It afforded me several months of space for contemplation and a reassessment of many aspects of life.

I came to the realization that property, especially big property, does not make man freer. As a co-owner of YUKOS, I had to make huge efforts to defend this property and to keep in check everything that might damage it.

I did not permit myself to say many things, since open thoughts could threaten the property, as well. I had to close my eyes to and/or put up with many things for the sake of maintaining and multiplying this property. Not only did I manage assets, but they also managed me.

That is why today I would like to warn young people who will soon enter positions of power: Do not envy big proprietors, gentlemen, do not think their life is easy and comfortable. Property opens up great opportunities, but it also enslaves the man, limits his creativity and erodes his personality. This is a manifestation of a powerful tyranny – the tyranny of property.

So here I am, taking on a new quality. I am turning into a man on the street, an ordinary representative of the upper middle class, whose main objective is simply to live rather than to possess something. A man fighting to be himself without owning anything.

Ratings, bureaucratic connections and promotional tricks are all meaningless. Developing the self, together with feelings, ideas, abilities, will, reason and faith are the only things that matter.

Such an understanding leads to the only possible and correct choice, the choice of freedom.

UNMANAGED DEMOCRACY

What happened to YUKOS has a direct bearing on the authorities; what will happen to the government after the YUKOS affair comes to an end is a critical question.
It is an old truth that each nation has a government that it deserves. I would like to add that every government is an embodiment of the people’s ideas about state power. In this sense, power equally belongs to the people of Britain, Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe, and the traditional perception of power by each nation forms the basis of its stability. That is why any talk of Western-style democratization of Arabic monarchies sounds as absurd as a proposal to restore the medieval absolute monarchy in Denmark.

In this context, Russia’s political tradition is synthetic, and Russia has always been on the borderline of civilizations. For the most part, however, Russia is a European country, thus the European political institutions providing for the division of powers look quite organic here.

At the same time, however, the reverse side of the medal should not be ignored either. The Russians have a habit of treating state power as a superior force that gives hope and faith. Russian history tells us that a loss of the super-rational faith in the state inevitably brings about chaos, insurrections, and revolutions.

One must draw a clear line, however, between the notions of state power and governance. The person performing the latter function is an official, or a bureaucrat, and is not a sacred cow in any way. He or she is an ordinary mortal called upon to take responsibility for any problems and mistakes that may arise.

The destruction of YUKOS shows that once the bureaucrats get off their leash, they become guided by anything but the interests of the state. They believe that the state machinery should serve their interests, while all other functions are inessential and can be forgotten (temporarily or for good). The bureaucrats have no respect for the state and regard it simply as a mechanism of attaining their personal objectives.

Viewed from this perspective, the YUKOS affair is not a conflict between the government and business. It is a politically and commercially motivated attack by one business (represented by government officials) at another business. Such a scenario makes the state hostage to the interests of individuals who happen to be empowered as government employees.

The same logic of action has prompted bureaucracy to eliminate the division of powers. The recently adopted political and governance model places an equal sign between the politician and bureaucrat and makes the contents of politics synonymous with a career within the narrow framework of a bureaucratic corporation.
What may the import of it be? Is it to mobilize the nation and bring it to new historic achievements? Not a single man in the quarters close to the Kremlin will agree to it if he means what he says. In private conversation they will tell you that the elimination of the division of powers will make it easier for the bureaucrats to collect money from the country and share it on the basis of their own perceptions without heeding the interests or needs of the citizens.

Another question is: Will the system being created in this way work efficiently and bring its architects to the desired goal? No, it will not. The measures being taken to increase the country’s governability may eventually make it fully ungovernable.

Why? Because there are eternal laws for organization of complex systems and there are historically settled rules of power.
Government always implies mutual motivations being applied to those who govern, as well as to those who are governed. The motives can range from building Communism to banal universal enrichment, but motivation is a must and it must be universal for all.

In the meantime, however, the worthless bureaucrats who follow the principle “This is for me, this is for me, and this is for me” offer no such motivation, nor do they understand what it is needed for. That is why they destroy all the mechanisms that could let the Russian people show their worth in elections, free market competition, freedom of public speech, and so on.

No genuine patriot will ever give his life for a handful of bureaucrats who are interested in nothing but their financial gain. No genuine poet will write odes in their honor. No scientist will take the effort to make discoveries in an environment where no one cares for his genius.

Soon, the omnivorous bureaucracy will find itself counteracted by a shapeless and furious mob, which will come out into the streets to ask: “Well, you promised us food and amusement, so where is it?” And the trick of waving a heap of bureaucratic papers in their faces and laughing will not work.

At this point, an ungovernable democracy full of endless woe will come onto the scene, and this is something that all of us must be apprehensive of.

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BE?

Naturally, I would like to make a contribution to making Russia free and prosperous, but I am also ready to be tolerant if the government decides I must stay in jail.
As a rank-and-file, post-Soviet prisoner, I feel pity for the greedy people who acted so brutally and senselessly toward the tens of thousands of YUKOS’ stockholders. They will fear a future of new generations of people who are willing to “take away and divide,” as well as farcical, as opposed to genuine, justice. Only a handful of federal television channel viewers will continue to believe that the current actions aim to defend the interests of all people.

But I have even more pity for the people in power who believe they are doing a good thing for the nation’s benefit. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the logic of history proves that building a modern economy is incompatible with repressive political methods, as well as the forceful re-division of property in the interests of certain groups. Furthermore, this machinery will not limit its actions to Khodorkovsky, YUKOS, or the oligarchs. It will victimize many others, including the architects and builders of the machinery.

My persecutors know perfectly well that the criminal case against me does not contain a single proof of my guilt, but that does not matter. They will conjure up other charges against me, say, for example, that I had committed arson in the Moscow Manege, or instigated an economic counter-revolution. I have been informed that they consider marooning me for another five years, or longer, since they are afraid that I will avenge myself.

Those artless people judge others by their yardstick. Relax, guys, I am not going to play the role of Count Monte Cristo. I find much more importance and comfort in breathing fresh spring air and having time with my children who will go to a regular Moscow school than sorting out my past.

I thank God that I have realized – and my persecutors have not – that earning lots of money is far from being the only (and is probably far from being the main) meaning of work. I am past the period of making lots of money. And with this burden now gone, I intend to work for the benefit of generations that will soon inherit this country, the generations that will have new values and new hopes.