THE DICTATORSHIP OF LAW
The tenth point of the leaflet addressed to RF president V. V. Putin says: “ The renewal of political repressions in Russia. The National-Bolsheviks Gromov, Tishin, Globa-Mikhaylenko, Bespalov, Korshunsky, Yezhov, Klenov, who stood up against the robbing of the people are political prisoners. The victims of political arbitrariness are such people as the physicist Danilov and the lawyer Trepashkin, punished altogether only for their independent behavior.”
While in detention in Lefortovo in 2001 I wrote and sent a political document – an open letter to the RF president entitled: “You have tightened the wrong screws and turned the wheel in the wrong direction”. The nazbols received this document and published it in the form of a brochure. In this document I examine many internal and external aspects of the president’s policies, it was only the second year of Putin’s rule then, but many things have already become clear. I will myself here in order to avoid reinventing some precise expressions. Here is what I wrote about the trials of the opponents of that time, logically addressing myself to Putin.
Famous show trials are defaming, shaking and worrying the country. Most probably they were started by your statement about the only dictatorship that you would like to introduce, the “dictatorship of law”. The Prosecutor General, the FSB, the police and the courts took your statement as a presidential order and hurried to execute it. However the following happened: neither the FSB, nor the Prosecutor General, nor other “services” were ever reformed and have heard about democracy and freedoms only on television. Most of the staff of these powerful organizations graduated from the Soviet school. Their mentality has frozen on the 1956 level. Independently from the staff’s age, totalitarian mentality is transmitted as a corporative spirit. Your order about a “dictatorship of law” turned into several series of trials.
1. The trials of “spies”. In this category we can put the trials of military journalists, scientists, ecologists and diplomats. The trial of captain Nikitin, the trial of Gregory Pasko (arrested in 1997 and accused of spying for Japan and of betraying the Motherland), the trial of Sutyagin, the trial of the diplomat Moyseyev (accused of spying for South Korea) and many others. Trials of “spies” consist of a different understanding by the State and the individuaclass="underline" what is secret and what isn’t during Putin’s rule. However until 1999 the ways, introduced by the State, that ruled in the RF were such that nothing was considered secret. Subsequently the State did not bother to announce that new secrecy rules were introduced. And it couldn’t have announced it because such rules were not introduced; simply now people were tried for what was encouraged before. The trials of “spies” are still ending in a disgrace for the investigation, but in years of unjust detention for the defendants. Why? Because two mentalities are clashing here: the 1965 worldview of the Soviet KGB and the Prosecutor General with the worldview of a modern scientist and ecologist at the end of the XX century.
(This is how I understood the situation in 2001. This is how I understand it in 2005. My comment: I did not understand then that the trials of the scientists as well as of other groups of society were made to scare, create an atmosphere of fear in the country. The goal was to paralyze society’s will in order to abuse the population easier. Many “cases” over the “spies” were started when VVP was still FSB director, possibly he started them. And I was wrong that the “spy” trials end with a disgrace for the investigation. If Nikitin, Pasko and Moyseyev made from three to four and a half years of prison each, then Igor Sutyagin and Valentin Danilov, the physicist from Krasnoyarsk, were sentenced to a merciless 14 years each. The trials of scientists continue. This year the former director of the Institute of problems related to the over-plasticity of metals (IPSM) Oscar Kaybishev was arrested. He is accused of sending technologies of “double assignment” to South Korea. What is meant is simply titanium discs for car wheels. The trial of Kaybishev started in Ufa on November 10th. In all he can be sentenced to ten years of detention.)
2. There is another series of trials: the trials of oligarchs. These trials are obviously called to prove to the population that here everybody is equal before the law and the “criminal” oligarchs, guilty of crimes, will be sentenced like any normal citizen. However the oligarchs’ trials prove something else. The three most famous oligarchs’ cases: Bykov’s case, Zhivilo’s case and Gusinsky’s case. In the first two the accusations are based exclusively on testimonies made by criminal authorities. It is the actual criminal Struganov, in Bykov’s case and Kharchinko in Zhivilo’s case as well as criminal authorities, leaders of criminal gangs. The single fact that the dictatorship of law is carried out with the help of people, whom society considers criminal, causes society to have a negative attitude towards the law and its representatives. (Besides, the “crimes”, both in Bykov’s and in Zhivilo’s case, were not carried out yet, but only, supposedly, planned.) The FSB and the Prosecutor General simply don’t have the right to behave in a “civilized” State, like they behave in Bykov and Zhivilo’s cases! Believe me, mister President; I have spent 20 years in civilized countries. This is disgraceful and illegal. Besides there are persistent rumors in the country that the true goal of Bykov and Zhivilo’s cases is to take away their property: KRAZ and NKAZA shares, to benefit other oligarchs. If it’s true, does it mean that you can order the doom of an oligarch to the FSB and the Prosecutor General? I pray God it isn’t true. Zhivilo is hiding, Bykov is in Lefortovo, while hundreds of other oligarchs, whose wealth began from crimes and fraud, are in liberty. It turns out that your justice is selective. Concerning the case of the oligarch Gusinsky, then, like the overwhelming majority of Russia’s intelligentsia, I have received the complete certainty, watching how the “dictatorship of the law” is carried out over him, that the reason of his “case’s” apparition was the long tongue of NTV – a TV channel opposed to Putin. This is already a question of freedom of speech and whether the Prosecutor General wanted it or not, they have destroyed an oppositional TV company. By the way the courts of the “civilized” countries disagreed with your prosecution and refused to extradite: Spain refused to extradite Gusinsky and France – Zhivilo… Possibly, if Bykov were not in Hungry, but in a more civilized country, he wouldn’t be in a Lefortovo cell.
(This is how I saw the situation in 2001. I saw it right. God did not give me what I asked for. It turned out that yes; you can really order to doom an oligarch to the Prosecutor General and the FSB. The biggest one if the client is Russia’s president. For two years now the country is watching how Khodorkovsky’s empire and himself were ruined, drowned and destroyed. At the same time we watched how another oligarch – Roman Abramovich has fantastically risen, became governor of Chukotka, owner of Chelsea and received 13 billion dollars for the Sibneft Company directly on his offshore accounts. Abramovich was paid with our money, dear Russians. In other words, we see how one oligarch was just brought to the Chitin region, in the city of Krasnokamensk, where the wind is dispersing uranium dust and the other has fantastic immunity. What a dictatorship of law is that? This is the toughest, harshest abuse. Actually, some say that Abramovich is only the manager of the Yeltsin family’s money. Then it is different. Today I get the impression that the investigators and prosecutors were only practicing their skills on “Bykov’s case” and “Zhivilo’s case”, preparing for a big case. Today I feel proud of myself that I was not scared to defend Bykov and have written the book “The Hunt for Bykov”, despite A. P. Bykov’s ambiguous reputation.)