How Open Russia’s projects survive.

The famous American financier and philanthropist George Soros is considering supporting the School of Public Politics in Tomsk. This project was the private initiative of former Yukos shareholders, chief among them Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who took a personal interest. Until recently it was financed by the Open Russia Foundation, which was forced to close down after the Public Prosecutor’s Office claimed it was an accessory to money-laundering - a claim which George Soros must have found less than persuasive, since he’s ready to take over funding from Khodorkovsky. Director Maria Krechetova tells Radio Svoboda about the project’s aims:

‘Education was key - that, and inviting the best Russian experts in economics, sociology, foreign politics and judicial reform, where we’re weak. What we’re after is the production of an active minority by encouraging people to change their lives and open their eyes, by stripping them of mythological preconception about what’s happening in Russia and opening up to them future possibilities’.

The School of Public Politics, which operated in fifty different regions, existed, above all, thanks to the private backing of Yukos shareholders.

‘I take it to have been a personal initiative of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which was backed by other shareholders. Mikhail Borisovich had a grand ambition - to transform Russia into a European country. He understood that this was practicable only through a transformation in society. It’s impossible, in other words, to create a European-style ruling class and assume that the country will automatically become European, Western, as a result - and just leave it at that. One has to initiate transformation from the bottom. The School of Public Politics wasn’t the only project [of Open Russia] only project of [Open Russia]. There was also, for instance, the Federation of Internet Literacy and the computerization of village libraries, enabling ordinary readers to have an exit into the world – a window on the world’.

What kind of experts lectured in the School of Public Politics?

‘Not just Russian experts, but experts with a worldwide reputation like Egor Timurovich Gaidar. Viachaslav Inozemtsev, another world-recognized expert, used to lecture on foreign politics, and Dmitri Oreshkin of the Merkator analytical group on election issues. All the best people, in fact - and it’s important to note that there were no political figures among them. Politics was never a yardstick here, just expert analysis.

How - and how much - did money travel from Open Russia to the School of Public Politics? Could any sort of shadowy money-laundering scheme be suspected here?

Let’s take for example the renting of a hall. We paid for the rental of the hall, so this money has gone on the organization of an event. Take something else, our expert’s airfare - payment is made to an airline,so that money’s gone too. We also paid an honorarium to our expert, who took off two whole nights to get here and back and who found a gap in his or her schedule to come out to the provinces and get some work done. Everything is backed up with the necessary documentation, which hasn’t once been questioned by the tax inspectorate or any other controlling authority. Open Russia had twenty inspections in 2005 alone, and only one fault was found - tickets for bed-clothes in the train between Moscow and Kostroma, which the experts were travelling to, were of an unknown design’.

Open Russia has closed down, as we know, but the School of Public Politics goes on working.

‘As things stand, negotiations with the Open Society Institute, better known as Soros Foundation, are happily approaching a final stage. The Foundation is ready to support the School of Public Politics in 2007 - and probably thereafter. Soros is very careful in selecting partner organizations, about the transparency of what they do, and before giving his support to the Tomsk School of Public Politics, he had its past activities very carefully scrutinized. He came to the conclusion that there was no money-laundering of any sort.

(Nikolai Pogodayev, Radio Svoboda, 26.02.2007)