A major interview on REN TV with writer Boris Akunin

Ksenia Turkova, REN TV, 7 October 2008

This month’s edition of Esquire, with your exchange of letters, is selling out everywhere. I even read on the Internet that someone went to three filling stations, five supermarkets and a number of kiosks before they found it. So people are taking an interest.

If that’s so then I’m very glad. I did not really expect it. That means that people genuinely have an interest in the subject. It seems to me that the most important themes, the most sensitive and painful issues, have become entangled in the destiny of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Quite often I do not agree with what our leaders say but I’m absolutely in agreement with Medvedev when he says that the two major problems facing our society are corruption and the state of Russia’s courts. Both these disturbing issues meet in the destiny of Khodorkovsky because, as I learned for myself from our correspondence, all the problems of Yukos and Khodorkovsky began at the famous meeting with Putin in February 2003 when Khodorkovsky made a report about corruption. After that they began to persecute him, imprison him and so on.

As for the trial, we all saw what happened there. I went myself and can testify that it was a disgraceful spectacle, discrediting the courts as an independent part of the system.

It is my deep conviction that until we return to that moment and establish justice on that issue we shall be caught between Scylla and Charibdys, between corruption and the lack of an independent court. It is impossible to live in modern society without somewhere we can turn for justice and truth.

And it was those thoughts that led you to interview Khodorkovsky?

Let me explain a little. In recent years I have led a quite strange, divided existence: as someone called Grigory Chkhartishvili who grew up and whose character was formed in Moscow, in Russia; and as a phantom figure, the writer Boris Akunin. My interests in life have also diverged. What I just said was said as an individual. However, I am also infected with the classic writer’s affliction when everything I see around me is transformed into something that can be used from a literary point of view. Read “The Seagull”; Trigorin says it all there. So for five years Mikhail Khodorkovsky has interested me, of course, not only as a public figure but also as a wonderful literary subject. The Count of Monte Cristo comes nowhere near it.

Just imagine: the secretary of a Komsomol organisation in the space of a few years becomes the richest man in Russia and one of the richest men in the world. Then, with just the same catastrophic speed, he finds himself stripped of everything, in prison, his business taken away, and on all TV channels dreadful things are broadcast about him, evidently filmed as part of a campaign ... Most dramatic of all is that in the summer of 2003 the authorities give him a clear hint, and the opportunity, to leave the country. He goes and we all think he will remain abroad, like all the previous fugitive oligarchs, but he comes back. He returns, evidently, in order to go to prison and he is imprisoned. He is kept in prison for five years and behaves with an unbelievable bravery and dignity that you would never expect from an oligarch.

So you begin to think that this is not a story about money but about something else entirely. It is the story of the path of suffering and ordeals taken by a striking, exceptional man before all our eyes.

Some have already asked me if this is a new literary project.

Of course, I cannot help considering that. My one fear is that the literary aspect could be hindered by the very personal feelings that I now have towards Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which I did not feel before.

Formerly I was an observer. Now that we have entered into this correspondence he has become a living person for me and that’s bad for me because it makes my life difficult. I know he is in prison and, judging from what I know (I’ve delved quite deeply into the subject) he was sent there unjustly. There is no end to the situation, and he is not alone. There’s a whole group of them there! Poor Svetlana Bakhmina is in prison, about to give birth; they let her go to Moscow for a vacation and then put her back in the penal colony. They did not give her parole, and she has two small children. What kind of behaviour is that? Poor Vasily Aleksanyan is in a prison hospital with cancer, and he is under investigation, he has not even been found guilty. I have been wounded by this subject and think, as they say, it will now give me neither rest nor sleep.

Did you learn something new during your correspondence?

Yes, it was undoubtedly an important event because there was much that was surprising in his answers. I don’t know what surprised me most. No, I do know. A person loses his fortune, is separated from his family and for five years has been sitting in a cell in inhuman conditions. Yet he is not at all bitter, it’s amazing!

I put a question about the trial and why the judge behaved in such a clearly prejudiced way towards him. He replied: “I was astonished by something else during the trial. The prosecution cross-examined more than 1500 people, of whom 80 agreed to testify. These people, who had good reason to fear for their future, did not perjure themselves. No one, I repeat, no one testified against myself and Platon [Lebedev]. You know, I wasn’t sure about these people but they proved even better than I thought.” If someone draws that conclusion about the human race after five years in prison it means a great deal.

Was anything cut from the correspondence? There wasn’t any censorship?

No, it was my condition that everything be published in full and the magazine respected that.

Why didn’t the magazine take fright, do you think? Journalists are very easily frightened now.

You know, there’s a rather comic side to this story. Because it is strange that a glossy, obviously frivolous magazine should print 12 pages of correspondence about public and political matters that is not so easy to read.

It happened as follows. I don’t very much like the mass media and cannot remember the last time I was on television. A while back I thought up a very crafty trick. Whenever someone rang up from the media and suggested that I talk on any subject that interested me, I would say: “Excellent, let’s talk about Mikhail Khodorkovsky.” Their desire vanished and I could live in peace. So Esquire magazine rings me up and says: “We’ve got an excellent idea — we want to bring together some famous people and ask them to interview another famous person. Two stars, two stories, as it were.” I reply: “Fine, there’s a man who interests me very much. He’s called Mikhail Khodorkovsky.” A very pleasant young woman says, “Can I ring you back?” They ring back and say, “Excellent. Go ahead.” And you can’t go back on your word ...

Were you surprised?

To begin with I could not believe it. I met the chief editor and said everything must be published in full, without any cuts. All or nothing. They said, “Yes, yes, that’s fine.” That’s why it happened in Esquire, and I have no regrets that I became involved with the magazine.

Is there anyone whom you find as interesting as Khodorkovsky?

For me there is no one quite as interesting as Khodorkovsky in Russia today. I can say that most definitely. Especially after our correspondence. He’s a major figure. A man with a big personality. You may have any kind of attitude to him. I think you could even hate him (although, in my view, he doesn’t hate anyone). But it’s hard, I believe, not to respect him.

Khodorkovsky is now giving quite a lot of interviews. In the last month alone he talked to two foreign publications, Figaro and (I think) the Financial Times, to Vedomosti and now to Esquire. What’s behind all this activity? In one of the interviews, incidentally, he noted that he was no longer being sent to the punishment cell for talking to the press. What’s going on, is it some kind of “thaw”?

I think, perhaps, that the local officials have got just a bit wiser. They often show excessive zeal because they simply fear their superiors. Or want to please them. Perhaps, someone has explained to them at last that each time they put Khodorkovsky in the punishment cell for some trifle they increase public sympathy towards him.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky now speaks in favour of supporting the authorities in a great many ways, and he says that Medvedev was right to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He also says that liberals should cooperate with the authorities. Many consider he is doing this to buy his freedom.

Let those many read our correspondence and they will certainly abandon such suspicions. The one thing that is wholly absent from his letters is a desire to please the authorities and be of service them. He says that he is no longer afraid. And that can be felt in every line.

That’s quite sincere?

Absolutely. It was the condition of our correspondence. That his answers would be sincere. I’m a writer. That’s my profession. An “engineer of human souls”. I can immediately detect when things don’t ring true. On many issues, I might add, I do not agree with him. On many matters. I hope that he’ll be released and then we can discuss everything freely, with the gloves off.

You think they will release him?

I think they’ll release Khodorkovsky when it becomes more advantageous for the authorities to release him than keep him behind bars. For that to happen we who want him released must become many and make our voice heard.

What’s your view, should liberals work with the regime? It’s a constant dilemma which journalists also face and I ask myself the same question very often. Should we, for instance, stop working for TV which is under pressure or concentrate on our patch and try honestly to do our job? The same in politics. Should we break off contacts with the system or cooperate with it?

For me this is a very touchy question. Thank God, my profession does not require me to work with the authorities. I encountered this problem when making a film of The State Councillor. In my novel when the hero finds himself in a difficult position he turns his back, walks away and refuses to cooperate with the authorities. In the film, where the artistic director was Nikita Mikhalkov, my hero remains. It’s exactly the same situation, in other words. Khodorkovsky in this case is on the side of the ending chosen by Mikhalkov, who also argued with me for a long while. All Russia’s troubles, he said, arise because the people who consider themselves honest and decent proudly turn their backs and walk away. As a result the scoundrels remain in charge of everything because they are not fastidious and will agree to everything.

I do not know if that position is correct but it’s a legitimate argument. Khodorkovsky says, Yes, you can work with the authorities but you must not surrender to them. You bring to that cooperation not only your knowledge but your principles. If the authorities recognise your principles, take them into account and adjust their own actions, he believes, then you can cooperate with the authorities.

Is that possible in Russia?

I don’t know. I’m very far from the centres of power. It’s my feeling that this is, probably hard to do. At the same time, it seems to me, we live in a period when each individual has the right to decide how much she or he will compromise or to what extent he or she will become a scoundrel. Because today their lives are not in danger. If you don’t want to be a scoundrel, then don’t. You won’t be killed or imprisoned, you won’t even die of hunger. You will simply be less successful in your career or some areas of your career will be entirely closed to you.

I have a very simple question for you. You spoke out on behalf of Aleksanyan, you often voice critical remarks about the regime. Now this interview with Khodorkovsky. Why do you do it?

O, I do it all with great displeasure! I would happily not do any of it. But ... How can I put it? ... The longer I live, the less I feel the familiar fears with which I have lived all my life, with which the majority of us live, and ever stronger there is one, single fear. Khodorkovsky also writes about this, which is interesting, and in a far more dramatic situation. It is the fear “of doing, or not doing, something that will make you cease to respect yourself”. I don’t mean that I have been swelling up every day with self-respect. But all the time I am afraid of missing some moment, after which I shall not live easy.

Now is a period of collective letters. Everyone supports or doesn’t support something. This affects a great many of those in the arts. Have you been disappointed in certain people over the last few years?

Yes, of course. But I shall not name names. On the other hand, there are many people whom I have begun to respect more. That’s what makes people interesting, that they change. And not always for the worse.

Let me quote the end of your correspondence where you thank Mikhail Khodorkovsky for his answers and say: “There are not a few writers and others in the arts who want to support you and for whom it is important to know your opinion”. Has someone really already expressed that wish? What will be the next step?

I don’t like the word demonstration. It will be, let’s say, a venture with the provisional name “Dialogue through prison bars” and it will not end with me. There are other writers, very good writers, who will continue the dialogue with Khodorkovsky. They will ask him questions or he will ask them questions. And it will continue until the chains are removed and the prison doors open.

I hope that happens. Thank you.