Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s mother Marina talks to Olga Shorina

The New Times (Moscow), 29 October 2007

Exactly four years ago Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested. He faces four more years in prison. A week before the anniversary of his arrest the prison administration punished him for ‘not keeping his hands behind his back’, thereby dashing any hope of immediate release on parole. Marina Khodorkovsky, mother of the most famous prisoner in Russia, does not expect compassion from the authorities, however.



Does Mikhail regret that he did not leave the country four years ago, as many then advised?

The question never arose. It was when he was already in the Krasnokamensk prison camp that I asked him that.

Misha thought for a while and said: ‘Did you want me to be a scoundrel, and make my children ashamed of me? I’m in prison but people respect me here.’ His oldest child Pavlik simply adores him. ‘If I’d gone abroad Pavlik would have thought me a thief, and all the other things they call me. And so would a great many people.’ I can’t say now whether he was right but he considers that what happened to him has stirred part of the nation from its passivity.

But there’s another part of the nation, which believes it was right to lock him up …


He always asks, ‘Does anyone say hurtful things to you?’ On the contrary, when people recognise me at the market they charge me less. I was at the wholesale market in Odintsovo and took a liking to a dress. I asked how much it cost, tried it on and suddenly noticed they were charging me much less. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘We talked it over and decided we’d give you a discount,’ they said. On the journey to Krasnokamensk or Chita [a 5-6 hour plane flight from Moscow] I’ve experienced nothing but goodwill.



Knowing everything that has happened since, how does Mikhail view the situation four years ago? He could assess the various alternatives, then and now. Could he have done something to prevent the sequence of events?

We believed they would treat him just as they did. But that they would destroy the company …! That we did not imagine, of course. As things turned out, they needed him less and his business more. Could he have done anything? I don’t think so. Probably, only if he’d gone against his conscience. It wasn’t a question of money. He’s quite indifferent when it comes to money. If it was only a matter of buying off his persecutors there would have been no problem. Quite different concessions were required, probably.

He knew he was about to be arrested?

Yes, four years ago on 19 October we were marking the ninth anniversary of the lycee [in 1994 Khodorkovsky and his parents set up a boarding school not far from Moscow for orphans and socially-deprived children]. Misha was there. Somehow I could tell we were seeing him for the last time, though he said nothing to me. As he was leaving I said, ‘I’ll see you off, Misha.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Don’t bother.’ What happened next I have no memory: how the evening went at the school, what I was doing …

Many have preferred to emigrate, however. Among the most recent is Mikhail Gutseriev, who has just asked for political asylum in Britain. What’s your attitude?

Now I regard it positively, because you won’t bring down a wall by running at it, head-on.




A number of Russia’s human rights activists have written to the president, calling on him to pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev since they have now served half their sentence. Will Mikhail apply for a pardon?

I don’t know. I’m going to see him in early November, probably, and I’ll ask him then.

What do you think — is there a chance he’ll be pardoned?

Of course not.

Do you expect a second conviction?

Of course. The task is to keep him shut up until the rule of this ‘gang’, as I call it, has come to an end. I think that Misha also understands all that.

How many times have you been to visit him during the last four years?

Oh, I couldn’t say. He’s permitted two visits a month. My daughter-in-law and I take it in turns. During the summer she went with the children, then I went twice a month. Now she’s just gone. In early November, we agreed, I will go.



Khodorkovsky has already been held in the Chita detention centre for almost a year. Do they always give you a three hour visit there?

It’s not three hours. They call it ‘three hours, including access’. You wait to enter, it’s a big place, you go to the director, you wait for him to see you, you wait while he writes out your pass … then they give you an escort, you cross all those courtyards, through some buildings, up staircases, back and forth … Therefore, the visit ends up being just over two hours. It depends on how fast I can run up all those stairs. When he was in the camp we were allowed three days together each month, in the visitors’ dormitory. Three days … When you can sit there like that, you can talk about many things that can’t be mentioned in prison. There are three of us sitting in the visitor’s room at the prison: apart from being constantly observed and our conversations recorded, the guard sits next to us all the time. The table’s here, we sit opposite and the guard sits to one side … How can you talk, what can you discuss?

Have they refused you a visit?

Not until now, at least. Mikhail’s lawyers take the request to the prosecutor’s office and after a while, in a week, we receive permission.

Mikhail is accustomed to comfort. How does he put up with his present conditions? What does he find particularly difficult? Does he complain to you?

Never. Never! When I begin asking about his everyday existence he says, ‘Let’s not waste time on that. You know I’m indifferent to home comforts. Everything here suits me. It’s okay.’ He was not looked after by his grandmother. From the age of seven, when he went to school, we were both out to work all day and he would be home alone. Misha can do everything — wash clothes, keep the place clean, and do the washing up. So living conditions don’t bother him.

He’s in an ordinary cell for two people. In the camp he was in a barrack with 69 others. What do they have in the cell?

They’ve got a bad TV set. I wanted to buy a new one but the administration won’t let me. There’s no refrigerator. That’s also not allowed. Now he’s reading the new case files. I have heard that they’ve put someone else in charge of the team of investigators but I can’t be sure, it’s only a rumour. Also they say the director of the detention centre has changed.

Which is more difficult, to be in the camp or the prison (detention centre)?

They each have good and bad points. There’s more freedom in the camp. When you’re not working you can walk about and go to the library. In the detention centre you’re shut up in a cell with only an hour’s exercise each day. In the camp Misha looked better. He was so tanned, it was hot there. Now he’s pale. They’ve begun to familiarise themselves with the new charges, so he probably doesn’t get enough exercise. In the mornings they take him to the prosecutor’s office, then they bring him back, and he goes without lunch.

He’s changed greatly over the last four years?

He’s lost weight, of course.

How’s his health?

You know, he never complains. Last time the only thing he said was that they’d done an x-ray, which is fine, and filled a tooth. Well, he is pale … But on the whole, in those conditions … He’s very tough psychologically. All the time he’s writing something, to judge by the number of notebooks he asks for. It seems to me that people read what he writes.

He also reads a lot?

He borrows so many books that the whole of their locker at the store-room is crammed full of them.



Does Mikhail follow what’s going on in Russia? What does he think?

He tells me the news, although I’ve also learned to use the Internet and read and listen to everything. But Misha … He can somehow foresee what’s happening. For him it’s not news. He said, Everything will be as the people want. Probably the people want what they’ve got now. He’s shares the cell with some other fellow. ‘Do you find things to talk about?’ I ask. Misha replies: ‘Yes, we hold intellectual discussions. Sometimes I hear something on the television and say: This is what will happen next. He says: That can’t be right. Later he asks me, ‘How did you know?’

Did he say when the people will want something different?

When there’s nothing to eat. That’s what I think. As long as there’s something to eat, we shall put up with it but when we start queuing again, as we once did, for a piece of salami, then … When I hear that food prices are being frozen, it terrifies me because I spent all my young years, it seems to me, standing in queues.

Is he making plans for when he gets out? What does he intend to do?

Misha says he’s getting an education in the humanities. He’s read a great many historical works — he always did love books about history. Whilst he’s been there he’s re-read [Karamzin’s multi-volume] ‘History of the Russian State’, all the authors he’s heard of: Russian, foreign … Misha says he wants to get involved in education. When he was still free he said, more than once, ‘I’ll stay in business until I’m about 40-45. Then I’ll get involved in education because you can’t implant democracy from above, it must come from below: a society must want to live in a democratic country.’ And that only comes to educated people. And not in the sense of a medical education or training to be an engineer, but the wide education of people with a broad outlook. That was why he created the lycee. Our children leave with quite a good education. Open Russia, all those projects, were directed towards that goal. As I understand it, he hasn’t abandoned that wish now.



Mikhail probably had many friends in his former life. What about now? Do some help and support you?

No, all the people in that circle have gone. No one keeps in touch with us. On the other hand, many new friends have appeared, many very good ones. People with whom he mixed and worked … We see people who were middle managers and employees of Yukos. The top people, no.

Four years ago, when Mikhail was arrested, the oligarchs’ trade union, as they used to call the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, spoke out in his defence. Then, nothing. Did anyone ring, and offer their support?

No. No one.

What about his Yukos colleagues who are now abroad. Do they help?

I don’t know anything about them. Thank God, I don’t need help so far. My husband works, I can still do everything myself … No, they don’t ring. I don’t need support. I never expected anything else.