Mikhail Khodorkovsky: "My living space from now on is the territory of freedom"

Despite the obvious lack of evidence of my guilt and a mass of evidence that I was not involved in any crimes whatsoever, the court has decided to send me to the camps.

I do not intend to harshly criticize the esteemed judge Irina Kolesnikova. I can imagine what sort of pressure she was under from the initiators of the “Khodorkovsky case” while she was preparing the verdict. Scores of government functionaries, or just plain self-interested intermediaries, were ready to bring any amount of money to the court just to make sure I was sent to Siberia.

When it comes right down to it, Kolesnikova is not the problem. The problem is that the judiciary in Russia has turned completely into a mindless appendage, a blunt weapon of the executive. Actually, not so much of the executive branch of power as of several economic groups with criminal ties. Millions of our fellow citizens have seen today that despite our country’s top leadership’s statement about the need to strengthen due process, there is nothing to pin our hopes on for now. This is a shame and a stain on our country, and its misfortune.

I do not admit guilt, and consider that my innocence has been proven. This is why I will appeal the sentence handed down to me today. For me, it is a fundamental matter of principle to attain truth and justice in my Motherland.

I know that the sentence in the criminal case against me was ultimately decided in the Kremlin. Some people in the president’s entourage insisted that only an acquittal could bring back society’s trust in the government, while others insisted that I be locked up for a long time, in order to deprive me of the will to live, to be free, and to fight.

I want to say thank you to the former, and bring to the attention of the latter that they have not won.

They will never be capable of understanding that freedom is an internal state of a person. It is precisely those who wish me ill, the ones who have dreams at night of a Khodorkovsky rabidly thirsting for vengeance, who are doomed to spend the rest of their lives trembling over the stolen assets of YUKOS.

It is they who are profoundly un-free and will never be free. It is their pitiful existence that is the true prison.

I, on the other hand, have the full right to say whatever I think and to act as I deem necessary, without needing to get my plans approved by any overseers. And this is why my living space from now on is the territory of freedom. The captives are those who remain slaves of the System, who have to grovel, to lie, and to debase others in order to preserve their incomes and their dubious status in this obscene society.

I will engage in civic activities; I plan to create several philanthropic organizations, for example a foundation to support Russian poetry and one for Russian philosophy, as well as a Union for Aid to Russian Prisoners. I remain an active participant in the programs of "Open Russia". I will soon be holding an extramural press conference at which I will discuss the highest-priority steps. This will be the first press conference from jail in post-Soviet history.

While I no longer have significant personal assets, there are many people willing to provide financial support for my programs because of their association with my name.

I want to say a big "thank you" to everybody who gathered here today inside and outside the courthouse, and to everybody who had supported my over the preceding year and a half. You are the decent and valiant people of Russia. I solemnly state that you can always count on me. Even though I don’t have big money any more, we can accomplish a great deal together.

I would like to say a separate word of thanks to those tens of thousands of ordinary inhabitants of Russia, from every corner of our country, who have supported me with their letters. My time in jail has shown me yet again that the Russian people are not mindless beasts of burden, as certain ideologists close to those in power assert. No, they are a righteous and noble people.

I will work together with those who want and are able to speak openly about our country, about our people, and about our common present and future. I will fight for freedom – for mine, for Platon Lebedev’s, for that of my other friends, and for that of all Russia. And particularly for that of the next generations, those to whom our country will belong in only a few years.

For them, my fate must become a lesson and an example.

Thank you to my family. They have been and remain my support, now and always. It may take many years, but I will walk out from the barbed wire and will return home. I have never been as sure of anything as I am of this.

Even though years in prison await me, I am still experiencing a great sense of relief. My life is now a clean slate; there is nothing extraneous, accidental, or superficial in it any more. I see my future as bright, and the air of tomorrow’s Russia as pure.

I have lost my place in the oligarchs’ clique. But I have gained a huge number of true and loyal friends.

I have regained a sense of my country. I am now together with my people – and now, we shall overcome together as well.

Do not despair. Truth always wins out – sooner or later.

(From Press Center for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 6.2.2005)