Yezhednevny zhurnal, 25 January 2008


Open letter to the first Soviet President

Dear Mikhail Gorbachev,

Do you remember 15 December 1986 and your famous telephone conversation with Andrei Sakharov? He then asked you to free all political prisoners. Sakharov told how, a week before, his friend Anatoly Marchenko had died in the Chistopol prison. Marchenko died soon after he had ended a four-month hunger strike, demanding that Soviet political prisoners be released.

After you talked to Sakharov you issued a decree, providing an amnesty for political prisoners. Hundreds of people were freed. Among them were my parents Felix Svetov and Zoya Krakhmalnikova. That deed of yours is now forever part of History.

Twenty two years have passed. I think you know that the mortally ill vice president of Yukos Vasily Aleksanyan is being held in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison. The investigation into his case is completed. His state of health is so bad, however, that he may not live to stand trial.

For incomprehensible reasons the authorities are refusing Aleksanyan the right to be transferred to a civilian hospital.

Power is so distributed in Russia that only one person can help Aleksanyan: the President, Vladimir Putin. It seems to me that you are among the few people who could pick up the phone and talk to the Russian president. In 1986 you called Academician Sakharov who was banished to the city of Gorky. That call changed the fate of thousands.

It’s quite likely that President Putin will listen to you ... Just as 22 years ago you listened to Andrei Sakharov.

In the case of Aleksanyan it is simply a question of showing mercy to a mortally ill man who should die at home and not in a prison cell.

Please forgive me if I have sent this letter to the wrong person.

Zoya Svetova
Journalist

24 January 2008