21 March 2022
INTRODUCTION
I’m a fairly calm fellow; I don’t usually get wound up about things. But I was, let’s say, concerned when I tuned in to the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head.
‘It has been stated,’ said the radio, ‘that a bounty of five hundred thousand dollars will be paid for the capture of the former head of the Yukos Oil Company, Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, who is currently hiding in London. The reward will be payable to any Russian citizen who brings the former oligarch back to Russia.’
The announcement didn’t quite say ‘Dead or alive’, but it came close.
This was in March 2021, after I had completed my ten years as a political prisoner in Vladimir Putin’s jails and seven years after I had been exiled to the West. My understanding has always been that serving a prison sentence – even those imposed for non-existent crimes – means the end of the matter, but that is evidently not the Kremlin’s view. Sergei Skripal had served his term and been released, but it didn’t stop Putin sending GRU killers to try to poison him, so why would I be any different? The radio announced that the bounty on my head had been promulgated by a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, so it was clear that it came from the top.
In functioning democracies – among which I number most Western nations – people are protected from abuse at the hands of their rulers. The people vote politicians in and they can vote them out. There are safeguards that prevent the accumulation of excessive power by potentially unsuitable individuals and stop them exploiting that power for personal ends.
But this is obviously not the case in authoritarian states like Putin’s Russia. It pretends it is a democracy, but in reality it is a personal dictatorship. And that makes it vitally important for Russians and the world to learn as much as possible about the character of the individuals who run the Kremlin. My own history has forced me to pay more than passing attention to this, and what I have learned is not reassuring. The extent of institutional criminality in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is staggering. The oligarchs of the 1990s, myself among them, were reproached for accumulating wealth, but they did so through the cut-and-thrust of business. Now, the oligarchs are inside the Kremlin and their wealth is derived from the brazen abuse of power.
It has reached the point where Putin and his cronies will fight any fight, commit any crime, destroy any opponent in order to preserve their wealth and keep the nation in their pernicious grip. Their bunker mentality and fear of what might come afterwards make them cling to power. The methods they are using to do this increasingly put the Russian people and the world in danger.
Things have to change, for Russia’s sake and for all humankind. Real change in Russia is possible only through the will of the Russian people; but the West can play its proper and constructive role in facilitating Russia’s transition from Putin’s mafia state to a more open, democratic country, as part of the community of nations. This is my attempt to examine the West’s efforts to curb the Kremlin’s repression at home and aggression abroad; to explain the reality of power in Putin’s Russia and how the West has frequently misunderstood it; and to show how the mistaken perceptions of leading figures – politicians, journalists and commentators – have shaped Western public opinion and led to misguided policies in East–West relations. It’s a story that looks back at how Russians have long admired the West, and how they took Western values and Western prosperity as an ideal to which they could aspire – a source of inspiration that has, in recent times, become tarnished. It’s a story that looks ahead, to ask if and how Russia can change. Can reforms end Russia’s status as a pariah state acting outside the democratic norms of the international community? What is the end goal for Russia’s future? What model of power would best serve the interests of the Russian people and the world as a whole? Can Russia become a part of the global solution, instead of part of the problem – and can the West help bring that transformation about? These questions must be addressed seriously and with urgency. Russia is one of the most important – and powerful – countries in the world. The world must not ignore her.
You might think that being locked up as a political prisoner in Vladimir Putin’s prisons and labour camps is unlucky, but I might disagree. I have read enough Shakespeare to understand the fate of his tragic heroes who attain worldly success, ascending to the heights of power and fortune, only to be struck down by reverses that strip them of all their gains. But as they plunge into ruin and despair, Shakespeare sometimes endows them with something they never had: the ability to see things clearly in themselves and in the world.
Before my arrest in October 2003, I had been close to the highest levels of power in Russia. In the early 1990s, I was an adviser to the first Russian prime minister, then a deputy minister myself, before returning to the business I had founded in the late 1980s and becoming one of the country’s leading industrialists. I was extremely wealthy, admired, envied and hated all at the same time.
My familiarity with the highest levels of power in Russia – and my subsequent experience of the punitive repression that such power routinely inflicts – followed by years living in a Western society that so many Russians admire and fear, has given me insight. Seeing and witnessing so much in both societies has convinced me that East and West have misunderstood each other so badly and so completely that, together, they are leading the globe into grave danger.
I was close enough to Vladimir Putin to discover how he thinks and to intuit the psychology of the man, to understand what his goals are for Russia and for himself. Few have had the opportunity to read Putin’s mind; even fewer have had the chance to say to his face everything they think about the corruption that exists right at the very top. I did exactly that in February 2003, in an angry, televised exchange between us that lifted the lid on the dark side of his regime and unleashed a chain of dramatic events for both of us.
Speaking truth to power – and doing so publicly – led to my arrest and incarceration. My experience of the capricious, personalised model of authority that Putin exercises taught me that there is a crucial difference between the Russian state and the men who now run the Kremlin. Putin is not Russia and Russia is not Putin. My prison years deepened my appreciation of Russia’s importance, her beauty and her future. They helped me to understand that Russia can be saved from an endless succession of dictatorships, that she can become a normal country, taking her rightful place in the community of nations, instead of a pariah state constantly embroiled in confrontation and acrimony.
When, finally, I was released from prison in December 2013, the authorities kicked me out of Russia, promising a life sentence should I ever return. Since then, while living in London I have gained an understanding of how Russia is seen from the West. It has helped me realise that the West can help Russia to solve her problems – not just for Russia’s sake, but for the West’s own sake, and for the world.
Earlier times: Vladimir Putin and I in discussion in the Kremlin, 2002
Putin and I debating the future of Russia in February 2003
I would define the West as those countries in Europe and the Americas where human rights are protected, where democratic values ensure that people have a choice in who governs them and where – despite the well-publicised challenges of recent years – civic institutions, checks and balances enshrine the right of the people to oversee and control those they have elected.