監禁10年 俄石油大亨獲釋
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2013/12/27
2013-12-25 Web only 作者：經濟學人
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| 圖片來源：flickr.com/photos/7141213@N04/ |
霍多科夫斯基穿著深藍色西裝、白襯杉和領帶，與一小群會說俄語的記者會面。36小時前，他還待在俄羅斯西北部的監獄之中；他曾是石油大亨，也是俄羅斯最知名的政治犯，總計在監獄中待了10年。
他說話的口氣堅決，卻也不帶憤怒、沒有崩潰；他進監獄之時，是個與俄羅斯總統普丁針鋒相對的企業大亨，出獄時則是俄羅斯當代歷史中最重要、最高貴的人物。
霍多科夫斯基獲釋，是由前德國外長根舍（Hans Dietrich Gensher）促成。根舍推動霍多科夫斯基特赦，亦獲得德國總理梅克爾的支持；此想法最初是在麥維德夫（Dmitry Medvedev）擔任總統之時提出，但克林姆林要求霍多科夫承認其罪行。
霍多科夫斯基無法接受此條件，並不是因為那是個謊言──他的案子大多是由謊言構成──而是因為那會讓曾在他的石油公司工作的人，身陷遭到起訴的風險之中。
但在11月某個時刻，俄羅斯同意了新的方案：霍多科夫斯基得寫信請求寬容，並提及他母親的健康情況不佳，但不必承認罪行。霍多科夫斯基也會請求普丁讓他離開俄羅斯，前往德國探視正在接受治療的母親；如此一來，情況就比較不像是俄羅斯將他驅逐──雖然實際上是如此──而是普丁的寬容之行。
部分普丁身邊的人士，越來越擔心俄羅斯經濟惡化以及國外形象不佳；另一部分則相信，唯有增強拑制才能繼續掌權。霍多科夫斯基寫信之後，普丁等了超過一個月才宣佈特赦，亦顯示兩方之間的確有爭執。
霍多科夫斯基無意涉入俄羅斯的權力鬥爭，但那並不表示他不會活躍於政治圈；在今日的俄羅斯，很少有人擁有他那樣的份量和道德高度。正如霍多科夫斯基所說，俄羅斯的問題並非總統個人，而是俄羅斯大部分民眾並不了解，他們得為自己的命運負責。他希望反對勢力也能學到和他相同的教訓：不要將你的同胞──不管是對手、掌權者還是反對者──逼到死角，無論如何，大家都得住在同一個國家。在他心中，那正是曼德拉的貢獻。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
The Economist
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
In from the
cold
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: December 25, 2013
Dec 23rd 2013, 14:45 by A.O. | BERLIN
A DARK navy suit, a white shirt and a tie sit awkwardly on Mikhail
Khodorkovsky as though his slightly slouched body is still fighting these
garments. Meeting a small group of Russian-speaking journalists, including your
correspondent, at Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin, he is still adjusting to
normal sensations, as someone who walks in from the cold and dark into a
brightly lit and overheated room. Thirty-six hours earlier Mr Khodorkovsky, a
former tycoon who became Russia's most famous political prisoner, was still inside
Penal Colony Number Seven, in Korelia, the north west of Russia, where he was
serving his second jail term. The first one was in Siberia. His imprisonment
lasted ten years altogether.
"I am glad to see you all. Since most of you I met ten years ago,
for me this [meeting] is a bridge to freedom," he says quietly with a
smile. Mentally, he still seems on the other shore, in a different world closed
to most people in the room, where his personal space was shrunk to a minimum,
where his every move was followed by video cameras and where time stopped—or
expanded—infinitely. He speaks quietly and meaningfully, weighing every word
and testing it for it true value and accuracy and sincerity. "I certainly
earned the right not to say what I don't think". He sounds tough, but not
angered and not broken.
"I was trying to look at my situation as a challenge. OK, enemy
forces got me. So, the situation is grave. But it also offers some
opportunities." He used this opportunity to the full—reading, writing,
reviewing the values of his life and the fate of his country. He went in as a
business tycoon who had crossed President Vladimir Putin. He came out as one of
the most significant and dignified figures in modern Russian history.
Choosing Checkpoint Charlie—which symbolised the East-West divide—as
the venue for his first public appearance heightened the sense of history, even
though this was hardly necessary. Many Russian dissidents came here, including
Elena Bonner, the wife of Andrei Sakharov. The portraits of Sakharov and Nelson
Mandela decorate the walls of the room. Above Mr Khodorkovsky's head in big
letters is printed one of the articles of the UN's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights". In 2003, when Mr Khodorkovsky was arrested, such company would
have seemed absurd. Ten years on, it looks natural, largely thanks to his own
courage and dignity.
Museums usually deal with history. But in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum
history was unfolding in the present: Mr Khodorkovsky spoke to journalists next
to a room which was dedicated to his time in jail. Mr Khodorkovsky's main press
conference, was broadcast on a screen at the entrance to the museum, turning
into an instant artefact. Ordinary visitors watched it in real time before
examining other things on display, including a hand-written copy of his
"last word" given at the end of his shameful show-trial in 2010 in a
Moscow court room, now displayed in a special glass case.
A timeline on the wall of the museum ends with October 25th, 2013—the
tenth anniversary of Mr Khodorkovsky's imprisonment. "He has been
unlawfully locked up in Russia's prisons and camps" serving "the
longest sentence ever imposed on political prisoners in Russia", the
timeline reads. On December 20th, "has been" turned into
"was". The way in which it happened was in keeping with "the
best traditions of the 1970s", Mr Khodorkovsky drily notes. He says he was
woken at 2am on December 19th, several hours after Mr Putin stunned journalists
in Russia and the world with his casual remark to the cameras that he was
planning to pardon Mr Khodorkovsky. He was taken to the nearest town and put on
a plane to St Petersburg, where he was transferred onto a private German
aircraft that waited for him on the tarmac, and flown to Berlin. "The
convoy left only when the aircraft door closed behind me," he says.
This cold-war style operation was the result of two-and-a-half years'
work by Hans Dietrich Gensher, the 86-year-old former German foreign minister
who oversaw the reunification of Germany. His mission to broker Mr
Khodorkovsky's pardon was supported by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor,
who had regularly raised the subject of Mr Khodorkovsky's imprisonment with Mr
Putin. Mr Gensher held two meetings with Mr Putin over the time. He also was in
contact with Mr Khodorkovsky, mostly through his lawyers. The idea was first
raised under Dmitry Medvedev, who stood in for Mr Putin as Russia's president
from 2008-12. But the Kremlin demanded that Mr Khodorkovsky admit his guilt.
This, Mr Khodorkovsky says, was unacceptable not because it was a
lie—most things in his case were—but because it would have put people who
worked for Yukos, his oil company, at risk of prosecution as part of a
conspiracy. Those who had fled abroad could have been extradited. "I could
not take it upon myself," he says.
But sometime in November a new formula was agreed: Mr Khodorkovsky
would write a letter asking for clemency and mentioning his mother's
deteriorating health, but there would be no admission of guilt. Mr Khodorkovsky
would also ask Mr Putin to allow him to leave the country and travel to
Germany, where his mother was undergoing treatment at the time. That way, it
would be less like an expulsion from the country—which it effectively was—but
an act of mercy on Mr Putin's part. On November 12th Mr Khodorkovsky wrote a
letter to Mr Putin, asking for pardon without any mention of his guilt. He also
wrote another letter to Mr Putin, telling him that he has no intention of
getting into everyday politics and would not fight for the return of Yukos's
assets, which have been expropriated by the Kremlin.
It appears that Mr Kodorkovsky's being prepared to leave Russia was one
of the main reasons for swaying Mr Putin's decision to let him out of jail. Mr
Khodorkovsky says he cannot return to Russia because there is a risk he would
not be let out again (there is still a $550m claim against him stemming from
the first case).
In the end, Mr Khodorkovsky's release had more in common with the
expulsion of dissidents—such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Vladimir
Bukovsky—than it did with the return of Andrei Sakharov from exile in 1986,
which signalled the seriousness of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. And as Mr
Khodorkovsky says, whereas his arrest in 2003 symbolised Russia's turn towards
an authoritarian, corporatist state run by former KGB men, his release is not a
symbol of the reversal of that trend. Rather, he says, "It is also a sign
that Putin and some people in the Kremlin have become seriously concerned about
Russia's image. Whether this concern leads to a real change is a subject of
intense fighting within the Kremlin."
While one part of Mr Putin's entourage is increasingly worried about
Russia's worsening economic situation and its image abroad, another part
believes that tightening the screws further and bringing in more repression is
the only way to stay in power. The fact that it took more than a month after Mr
Khodorkovsky's letter for Mr Putin to announce his decision is one sign of the
fighting between them.
In early December Russia's deputy prosecutor started to talk on the
record about a likely third case against Mr Khodorkovsky, which had "very
good potential". As one person close to Mr Khodorkovsky says, this was
intended for Mr Putin's ears. But at his press conference on December 19th—the
day celebrating the security services—Mr Putin put an end to it, saying a third
case had no chances. He then announced his decision to pardon Mr Khodorkovsky.
(Mr Putin has since also granted an amnesty to members of the Pussy Riot band).
Is Mr Khodorkovsky grateful to the man who kept him in jail for ten years and
released him a few months before his term was due to expire, to improve his own
image?
"I was really contemplating for a long time how I would express
what I feel toward Mr Putin. All these years, all the decisions in my case,
were made by one person. And it would be hard to say that I am grateful to him.
Let me say: I am happy about this decision. That would be the most
precise," he says. But while Mr Khodorkovsky does not intend to get
involved in a struggle for political power, it does not mean that he will not
be politically active. His weight and moral authority—earned by the ten-year
incarceration—are rare in today's Russia.
And as Mr Khodorkovsky says, "The Russian problem is not just the
president as a person, the problem is that our citizens in the large majority
don't understand that they have to be responsible for their own fate. They are
so happy to delegate it to, say, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and then they
will entrust it to somebody else, and I think that for such a big country as
Russia this is the path to a dead end." His thoughts may be as unpalatable
to Russia's opposition as they are to the Kremlin.
"The main lesson that I have drawn and I would wish that our
opposition would draw the same lesson: Don't push your fellow citizens—be they
opponents, or in power, or in the opposition—into a corner. No matter what, we
have to live in the same country. This is what Mandela contributed, in my
opinion. That's what I say, that's what I write, and that is what many
criticise me for. And, thank God, so be it."
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
