Much is being made in the Western media about yesterday’s sentencing of the erstwhile richest man in Russia, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to six years in prison after being convicted of stealing oil from his own company and laundering the proceeds. Never mind that his conviction and sentencing were as predictable as the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
What is noteworthy, however, is the fact that Khodorkovsky’s trial amounted to a violation of the generally recognized principle of double jeopardy – since he was already serving an eight-year sentence after being convicted on similar charges in 2003. Now he’ll be rotting away in his Siberian prison cell until 2017 … at least.
But the real story here is how this kangaroo trial reinforced Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s manifest determination to quarantine anyone who poses any credible threat to his authoritarian rule. Indeed, his rubber-stamp State Duma passed a law in 2008 allowing a defendant to be retried if new evidence suggests that he committed more serious crimes, which prosecutors proffered as the basis for Khodorkovsky’s retrial.
This means that, since Putin seems equally determined to serve as Russia’s most powerful politician for life, Khodorkovsky will either face more trumped-up charges to keep him in prison or die suddenly (under suspicious circumstances) before 2017.
In fact, Putin may have unwittingly telegraphed his intent in this respect a couple of weeks ago when he decreed, and thus preempted, the outcome of Khodorkovsky’s retrial by comparing him to Bernie Madoff (the American Ponzi schemer who is serving 150 years).
Specifically, he declared, with authority that would make even Joseph Stalin blush, that:
A thief must sit in prison.
(Moscow Times, December 17, 2010)
Truth be told, though, I knew Khodorkovsky’s fate would be thus when I first commented on his case over five years ago:
Today marks a milestone in Russia’s ambivalent transition from totalitarianism to democracy. And, alas, it does not bode well for the Russian democratic reformers in whom so many Western companies and governments invested their fortunes and political goodwill. Because Russian President Vladimir Putin (himself a former KGB agent) has effectively resurrected one of the most feared tools of repression in the old Soviet Union: the use of KGB agents to arrest and toss into the gulag anyone suspected of opposing Communist rule or dissenting from the Party line.
Indeed, as if to dramatize his zero tolerance of dissent, it seems Putin decided to make an example of the richest man in Russia (who, not insignificantly, is also a Jew). Therefore, on one day in October 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky went from running one of Russia’s most profitable companies and funding democratic reformers, to being arrested and thrown in prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion. And, thus began an ordeal that ended today with a prison sentence of eight years (presumably to be served in the infamous Russian Gulag Archipelago).
Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that Khodorkovsky is merely road kill on the seemingly inexorable march towards the Putinization of Russia. After all, Putin has declared, unabashedly, his regret at the loss of the authoritarian powers that held Russia and the satellite states of the Soviet Union together for almost 50 years. And, he seems determined to reclaim those powers by consolidating absolute control within Russia….
(Putin sends Khodorkovsky off to the Gulag, The iPINIONS Journal, June 1, 2005)
So, Russia is as Putin does. As for Khodorkovsky, I fear that all of the Western expressions of political outrage will do nothing to alter his fate. After all, given what little regard Putin showed for George W. Bush’s platitudes about democracy and the rule of law, he’s bound to show unbridled contempt for similar exhortations coming from leaders like President Obama and Chancellor Merkel (of Germany).
Moreover, given the way Western governments continued their solicitous relationships with Russia even after he was implicated in the assassination of a rogue Russian spy in London and the killing of a number of journalists in Moscow, Putin can be forgiven for deducing that his persecution of Khodorkovsky will have no adverse impact whatsoever on Russia’s relationship with Western countries.
Hail Putin….
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Putin sends Khodorkovsky off to Gulag…
Victoria Chikvashvili says
I wish you out of jail