Published on April 25, 2006 | Reading time: 10 minutes
By Jens Hartman
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has his lawyers read Tocqueville and Fukuyama. Books are forbidden to him. To this end, the former oil baron in the Krasnokamensk prison camp is developing visions for Russia 2020
What would you take with you to a desert island? For Inna Khodorkovskaya, this question, which is usually asked of celebrities in magazines, is not a hypothetical gimmick, but a concrete task. She decides on an electric hair clipper, a pocket radio, a fur hat that keeps her warm even in minus 40 degree steppe winds, the latest Moscow magazines and photos of her daughter Anastasija and twin sons Gleb and Ilya.
In the large plastic bag she also packs a can of coffee, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots – 20 kilos, the maximum that Inna Khodorkovskaya is allowed to take with her into the JaG 14/10 penal camp according to the law.
There are 910,000 people in Russian camps and detention centers. Nowhere in the world have more prisoners per capita than in Russia.
Inna’s husband Mikhail Khodorkovsky is Russia’s number one prisoner. The richest Russian, estimated by the business magazine Forbes in 2003 to have a personal fortune of $15 billion, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for tax evasion and fraud. He was deported to deepest Siberia: Camp JaG 14/10 in Krasnokamensk, a city in the Russia-China-Mongolia triangle, 6,500 kilometers from Moscow.
For years, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was considered a prodigy of the new Russian economy. The oil baron built the largest Russian oil company, Yukos, which in its best times had a market capitalization of $40 billion. His wealth made him a threat to President Vladimir Putin. An independent spirit with a penchant for presumption, unpredictable, liberal, full of ambition. The Russian justice system didn’t just smash Yukos. She also found that Khodorkovsky was the head of a criminal organization. The Council of Europe criticized the trial as politically motivated, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is handling the case. Many consider the former oil baron who defied President Vladimir Putin to be a political prisoner.
Inna Khodorkovskaya, the oligarch’s wife, has left her children behind in their country house. “Jablonevi Sad” – “Apple Orchard” – is the name of the settlement on Rublovo-Uspensker Chaussee, the billionaire street outside Moscow, where the Khodorkovskys live. The owners of what was once the largest Russian oil company, Yukos, have their domicile in the “Apple Orchard”. There has been an eerie silence there since two of the hosts were in the camp and three fled abroad to escape the Russian justice system.
Inna Khodorkovskaya lives a life in waiting, a life marked by visits to the camp four times a year and the occasional post. The meeting with her husband, whom she last saw in October, is a month overdue. The visiting rooms in the camp are being renovated and she has to be patient, they keep saying. Now she has received permission from the prison authorities to travel to the end of the world.
The 36-year-old, together with her mother-in-law Marina Khodorkovskaya, a 71-year-old, strong-willed woman, lawyer Anton Drel and bodyguards, flies seven hours from Moscow to Chita in Eastern Siberia in a chartered jet. From the plane behind the Urals, she can see the oil fields on the Ob River, which made her husband a multi-billionaire.
Stopover in Novosibirsk. Fuel stop. Novosibirsk, of all places. Five o’clock in the morning, of all times. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at this same airport at this same time on October 25, 2003. A special unit of the domestic intelligence service FSB stormed his charter plane and took him to Moscow in handcuffs. Inna Khodorkovskaya says that day seemed “like an accident” to her. It took her a year to recover from the “internal injuries”. She immediately told her children that their father had been locked up. “Since then I’ve been dad and mom in one.”
Continue east to Chita behind Lake Baikal. “Welcome to Chita,” is written on a sign at the airport. Ten hours waiting for the train. Then 15 hours train ride Chita-Krasnokamensk.
Siberia is Russia’s treasure trove: oil, gas, diamonds, uranium. The tsar already sent his opponents into the lead mines and silver mines near Chita. Princess Maria Volkonskaya was just 21 years old when she left her family and palace in Saint Petersburg in December 1826 and followed her husband Sergei into exile in the carriage.
Prince Sergei Volkonsky, like many nobles who served in elite regiments, refused to take the oath to the new Tsar Nicholas I in protest against the absolutist regime.
He was one of the “Decembrists”, named after the uprising on December 14th (in Russian: dekabr) 1825. The Decembrists and their wives, who followed them into exile, are still revered in Russia today as courageous people who… defied authorities. Maria Volkonskaya is considered by many to be the “Princess of Siberia.” Khodorkovsky now refers to his wife Inna as the “wife of a Decembrist.”
The railway keeps stopping and giving way to freight trains transporting logs to China. A train with oil cisterns also rattles past. “Yukos” is still written on the ship’s sides. Oil exports to China brought the company billions. The route leads past abandoned barracks and the remains of tanks left behind by the Russian army on the border with China, past wooden villages without water or electricity, in front of which ragged children play.
Krasnokamensk: The Khodorkovsky family is now renting an apartment in a prefabricated building in the city with 57,000 residents for camp visits. The mother-in-law, who accompanies Inna, got up early, fried fish and meat cutlets, mixed a salad, wrapped schnitzels and potatoes in foil. Food for 72 hours. This is how long Inna Khodorkovskaya is allowed to see her husband.
Scrap metal is piled up in front of the fence of the “general regime penal and correctional camp,” as the camp where Khodorkovsky is imprisoned is officially called. The watchtowers resemble the crooked command bridges of soul sellers stranded in the steppe. Inna Khodorkovskaya wears dark sunglasses, fur and black fur shoes. An iron door, a long corridor, a second iron door. Guards help her carry the bags. She feels like she’s “in a neutral zone that runs on the border between freedom and imprisonment,” she says about the dormitory near the camp fence where she is allowed to see her husband. Strip search as per regulations, then a corridor with nine doors. Behind her door are two small rooms. A table, two armchairs, a double bed, a nightstand. At the end of the hallway there is a shower and a toilet. A shared kitchen with two hotplates. Inna gives her medication to the guard. The mother-in-law, who accompanies her for the first few hours, is allowed to keep her sedatives.
Fifteen minutes later, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is ushered in. He wears black cotton trousers, a turtleneck sweater, a vest and sneakers, his hair is cropped short, and rimless glasses. The three assume that their conversations are being recorded using hidden devices.
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Mother-in-law Marina leaves the dorm after four hours “to leave the two of them alone.” Inna stays 72 hours “He looks good. However, in the last four months his hair has become grayer,” she will later say at an impromptu press conference, back in freedom. The isolation is bothering him and he lacks dialogue with the outside world.
Day-to-day camp life is tightly structured: 6 a.m. wake-up, 6:30 a.m. breakfast, 7 a.m. roll call, then work in the camp sewing department as a packer, 1 p.m. lunch, 2 p.m. roll call, then work in the camp sewing department, 6 p.m. end of the working day, roll call, 7 p.m Dinner, leisure time, TV, reading or sport, 10 p.m. rest. Khodorkovsky was recently moved to a solitary cell – reportedly for his own protection. A fellow prisoner had previously injured him in the face with a knife.
Most of the 1,000 prisoners are serving time for theft and come from the villages around Krasnokamensk. Stolen a sack of flour is enough to last you four years in Russia. Inna talks about how they watch him when he eats, when he exercises and reads. He is still looked at like an “alien,” but he has gotten used to it now. They call Khodorkovsky, after his father’s name, “Borisovich.” That sounds like an honorary title in the “Zone”. Several guards were fired for selling paparazzi photos of Khodorkovsky to newspapers. Raids on dormitories are happening more frequently than before. High-ranking officials from Moscow, including secret service employees, are permanent guests in Krasnokamensk.
Khodorkovsky is the only one in the “zone” with two college degrees, in chemistry and business administration. He would like to teach his fellow prisoners chemistry, physics, mathematics, or hold courses on the basics of entrepreneurship. He would also like to write a doctoral thesis on “The Colonization of the Russian Far East by China.” The camp management forbade this. His application for a computer was also rejected. Khodorkovsky subscribes to 170 magazines and newspapers. However, they are only delivered to him irregularly. Inna says that only every second letter reaches him. The camp censor even reads her daughter’s letter, which she has with her.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyers have to prepare themselves philosophically and politically for their visits to him. This time, at the request of prisoner number one, lawyer Anton Drel, who accompanied Inna to Krasnokamensk, read Alexis de Tocqueville and Francis Fukuyama. Khodorkovsky writes against the forced inaction and drafts ideas in a notebook. “His physique has gotten used to everyday life in the camp, but his mind is still having a hard time with it,” says Inna.
If he succeeds in overcoming camp censorship, Khodorkovsky will speak out with polemics. You can read them in opposition newspapers or on the Internet. In it he outlines his vision of “Russia 2020”. Russia 2020 is a federal state, a presidential-parliamentary republic, in which elections are freely held and human rights are respected. It is no longer dependent solely on raw materials, oil and gas, but on its intellectual potential. That sounds like an election program.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky recently spent five days in prison because guards found an official paper from the Ministry of Justice in his bedside cabinet – about the rights and obligations of a prisoner. His lawyers are challenging such disciplinary measures in court. Ultimately, her client can only hope for early release “with good behavior and a clear willingness to improve and be re-educated.”
This would not be possible until October 2007 at the earliest, after half of the prison term had been served (including pre-trial detention). Before that, Mikhail Khodorkovsky could become a free ranger, i.e. live outside the camp fence.
According to his lawyers, Khodorkovsky often asks about life outside. Krasnokamensk, only founded in 1968, was for a long time a closed city that could not be found on any maps. In the steppe, miners dug for uranium for Soviet nuclear warheads. The secrecy is also due to the fact that there are no street names.
In summer the temperatures rise to 40 degrees plus, in winter they fall to 40 degrees minus. The residents who live in prefabricated buildings are proud of their city, which has an atomic symbol in its coat of arms. The women practice salsa in dance classes in the evenings, the children learn karate, the city’s notables meet every Friday in the banya, the bandits play billiards in the “Bergarbeiter” café. The population has fallen by 16,000 or more than 20 percent since 1992.
Back then, disarmament was in full swing, warheads were being scrapped, and there was no longer any work in the mines. Today uranium is in demand again. The combine employs 12,000 people. Everyone here knows Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Word spread like wildfire that his family was visiting. “They have now increased the food ration in the camp,” said a grandmother at the market. In the city at the end of the world, Khodorkovsky is neither a people’s hero nor an enemy of the people; his fate does not arouse any particular sympathy. “He rebelled against Putin. That’s why he’s in prison,” says a local entrepreneur.
The visit is over in the visiting room at Camp JaG 14/10. “We are together. We are together again,” said her husband when he said goodbye, says Inna Khodorkovskaya. Could she imagine moving to Eastern Siberia like the women of the Decembrists once did? “That would only make sense if Mischa were released. We’ll have to wait and see.” Khodorkovsky’s lawyers have requested that their client be transferred to a penal colony closer to Moscow. The Justice Department refused. It is said that there is no space available in any of the 249 Russian camps. President Vladimir Putin recently said he didn’t even know where Khodorkovsky was being held. The oil baron must learn to subordinate himself. The time when he gave orders is over.
(c) 2006 by Die Weltwoche, Zurich.