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Good afternoon, Yekaterina!
We are very happy to see you today at the trial
of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.
Please tell us about your impressions of what you have seen.
This is my second time here, and for the second time
I am appalled at the level of organization of the judicial practice.
I am appalled to hear people on the left [the defense team]
and on the right [the prosecution team] speaking in different languages,
and I do not understand how this can be judged objectively.
“And who are the judges?”
This question arises because the level of education
and intellect of the defendants so clearly surpasses,
I am sorry to say, the level of the prosecution
that the gap is humongous.
I do not understand why this stupidity has been going
on for more than six years now.
I am convinced that over this time such people
as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev
could have done very much for our country
in the sphere of both the economy and education.
I know that Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been very concerned
with education and is continuing to be concerned with it,
because children are our future
and education is also in an appalling state.
It is surprising that when I was preparing to go to the court session,
many would use body language and plain words to tell me,
“You are out of your mind. You have three children.”
And I made the conclusion that the political motivation
of this affair is clear to everyone.
Everyone is scared.
Increasingly more and more often,
I come across indifference in our society,
and I think that change is in the air.
Like in Gorky’s play Vassa Zheleznova, I feel myself like Rachel.
I am sure that a revolution in people’s minds is in the offing;
it is inevitable.
We are all fed up with all sorts of promises
of Communism and bright future,
but, thank God, we now have a chance to see
how people in Europe live,
and we see how quickly the gap is growing,
and there is no light of hope.
Something needs to be changed,
and Russia’s future must be built by young,
strong, and very smart men.
If we had a woman for president,
she would have put an end to all this…
the child has been punished…
This clearly shows what games with the state lead to.
If I were an economics student,
I would attend these court sessions –
luckily, this is possible –
and would try to understand it all.
I got a confirmation today that everything is in order,
all the documentation is in order.
To every question of the prosecution,
there is a reasoned and documented answer.
I do not understand why all the ballyhoo.
I do not understand anything.
And everyone keeps telling me all the time
that we should leave this country,
but I will be unable live in another country knowing
that in principle everything depends on us.
We need to believe in that
and simply fight indifference within ourselves.