Spirit of 1937

In Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal, reflecting on the senseless cruelty of the Khodorkovsky trial and its verdict, Leonid Radzikhovsky writes about the state of virtual national blackmail that exists between the Putin government and the people of Russia, with the government relentlessly plugging the line that it is the "least worst" option, and that the alternatives can only be even darker:

I expected a “guilty” verdict. And nevertheless I am shocked - 9 years, no leniency: "He’ll go to jail, I said!" Poor parents and wife of Khodorkovsky, relatives of Lebedev! I remember there was this film about the Decembrists, "Star of Captivating Fortune", and there, at the end of the first series, the successful symbolic sequence: the enormous fence of the prison, reaching to the sky, as a waggon carrying the convicted Decembrists drives in, and the gates slowly close. "This is our motherland, my son".

Well, it’s all right, the defenders of the unjustly maligned law court will hurry to tell me, these multi-millionaires are no Decembrists, not one bit of it. And really they only have themselves to blame – they’re guilty, all too guilty! Too rich, too conspicuous ("such impudence!"), dizzy with success, what can one say. "If you want to avoid being kidnapped, don’t flaunt your wealth" – is the advice on TV. They flaunted it, but Russia doesn’t forgive that. (Why, for God’s sake, don’t they live in England like the governor of Chukotka, or in France like Federal Council member Pugachev, or in Switzerland like the multi-millionaire from Perm', D. Rybolovlev, and now even the nuclear millionaire Adamov? So they themselves are guilty, just look at where they chose to live - in Russia!)

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This "spirit of 1937" is alive. It is sleeping - because no one wakes it. But just wait - the noble impulses of the soul will emerge, the "purest example of the purest charm". Of course, the government is afraid of that. Yes, in spite of everything, the government, THIS PUTIN GOVERNMENT – is the lesser evil. It is a greater evil for Khodorkovsky. It is an evil for the country - weak, incompetent, cruel to its personal enemies (or those whom it considers enemies), mercenary, etc. One could go on listing for a long time what is already obvious to any normal person. But this government is the lesser evil. Lesser – than what? Lesser than the possible Brown Revolution, lesser than the violent overthrow of this government, lesser than the spontaneous outburst of "national retribution".