| There is quite a lot of truth in [former Yukos CEO] Mikhail
Khodorkovsky's article about the crisis of liberalism in Russia, YABLOKO
party deputy chairman Sergey
Ivanenko has told Ekho Moskvy radio. In the article published in the
Vedomosti daily, Khodorkovsky said that liberalism in Russia was in crisis
and proposedspecific steps that could be used to persuade Russia's population
of the need for and inevitability of the liberal path of development. Khodorkovsky
calls the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) and YABLOKO's defeat at the
recent State Duma elections a sign of a crisis of liberalism. "Mikhail
Khodorkovsky's article is of great interest, although I would rather he
had not been in prison when it came out. A man who signs a manifesto while
in jail is bound by the circumstances, whether he likes it or not,"
Ivanenko said. "Nevertheless, his comments are of great value,"
he added. "Political assessments [made by Khodorkovsky] regarding
privatization, the 1998 economic crisis and many things that 'the democrats'
did coincide the YABLOKO party’s statements all these years,"
Ivanenko said. "Our party's main problem is that we failed to convince
Russians that we are not these business-democrats who acted exclusively
in their own interests and thus created the massive problem of a split
between the authorities and society," he said. "However, I do
not think that the work by democratic politicians over the past 15 years
was pointless. After all, a democratic constitution is in force in Russia.
We do have freedoms, although they are curtailed," Ivanenko said.
"Speaking in general, we have managed to open the door of the cage
the Soviet people were kept in for so many years," Ivanenko added.
See also:
The Indisputable Crisis of
Russian Liberalism. By Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Moscow Times, March 31,
2004
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