Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Good afternoon, Mikhail! It is a pleasure to see you
at the Khamovniki Court today,
where the case of Mikhail Borisovich [Khodorkovsky]
and Platon Leonidovich [Lebedev] is being heard.
What are your impressions from what you have seen in the courtroom?
First of all, the impressions, of course, are still vague;
I need to sort them out and formulate.
Maybe because the left side [of the courtroom],
the defense, even outwardly looks the way it looks
and the right side, the prosecution, looks the way it looks,
the feeling is that what is happening is a planned destruction
of intellect and dignity in that room.
The horror consists in that human memory
always tries to move unpleasant things to the most distant corner,
because it is easier to exist without them.
If we do not remember about them,
they somehow get erased later and are gone,
and you look at the television screen and think:
“Damn! That joke of the head of state was funny!
See, they seem to have learned how to talk to students
and answer their questions and are not afraid to improvise.”
And they seem to be not bad guys at all.
What is forgotten is this indelible sin of theirs,
this thing that they have done when they took their personal revenge
and I am sure that this is personal vendetta to the sphere of “justice”
and buried for a long time the hopes of generations
that it is possible to build something in this country
and be proud of that something.
There exists a mechanism which will protect you
and what you have built, and that will not be taken away
from you under the pretext of your having said the wrong word
or made the wrong comment.
Those hopes were like a door through which fresh air
was blowing, and it has been shut.
So there, behind that shut door,
we continue to exist and forget that this is going on,
and we need to remember about it each time we turn on the television,
each time we hear these people talk,
and whatever correct things they say,
they have done this and have not repented.
My account with them is of personal nature,
because I do not want to live in a country where people like that
have the right to commit such things.
I see that the defendants are the most worthy representatives of high spirit.
I have never had a chance to deal with them,
because at that time there was simply no way
how I could shake their hands,
but now I consider this my obligation to pass my handshake on to them.
I think that history places everything it their right places,
only, regrettably, at a very high price.
All great sagas have been written about the firmness of human spirit,
and, of course, it is impossible to imagine
what a man can pass through when he is thrown down
from where they once were to where they are now.
Only, those who have been pushing them down
and those who are continuing to push them down now,
confusing words and stressing them on the wrong syllable,
do not understand that they are lice, which will be swept away,
and this firmness of spirit will be sung in books.