Суд мести

Why the president took offence at the oligarch

I should apologise for dragging you through the debris of official correspondence. But this episode is crucial, for it provides cast-iron proof of the political imperative behind the whole case against Yukos. And therefore behind the Pichugin case as well. The situation in Russia in spring 2003 and the Prosecutor General's letter clearly show that there were no objective signs of any shift in the state's position regarding big business. The signs are in the world of the subjective - in the nature, the interests and the scale of the personality of Putin and his friends.

They were not the first to set about a precision instrument with a sledgehammer. Russia's economy is febrile, as was the Soviet economy under Khrushchev - who also believed in simple decisions, coercive methods and quick results. The country's new masters attacked the capitalists, who advance ideas they do not understand. The wheels of justice to order were set in motion. And the first to fall beneath them was Aleksey Pichugin.

Ultimately, surely the hordes of economic and political commentators, analysts and experts, opposition and loyal, should have sensed that something was up? For the time being at least, Russia's press is on the ball. But from reports back then, it's clear that there was neither rumour nor leak of the impending onslaught.

At his infrequent meetings with corporate figures and frequent ones with politicians, Putin likes to highlight corruption and inefficiency in the machinery of state. His words differ little from Khodorkovskiy's at such get-togethers. Suffice it to read the commentaries about the meeting held on 19 February 2003. There is no mistaking what the president said: "Moscow, 19 February, INTERFAX - The chairman of the Rosneft council of directors should explain the Severnaya Neft deal, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting in the Kremlin with representatives of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists. 'Of course the chairman of the council of directors (of Rosneft) should provide a response,' V. Putin said."

Everyone remembers the meeting for the way it ended in an argument between Khodorkovskiy and Putin about the corrupt nature of that Rosneft deal. And with hindsight, everyone sees this as the start of the conflict. But the president was agreeing with the oligarch! For some reason, people forget that.

At the time not even the political commentators closest to the Kremlin sensed anything amiss. They were pondering the future of the reforms, and whose side Putin was on. In the West they peered into the coffee grinds. In Russia they sifted through the entrails. Nobody had an inkling. Even after Pichugin was arrested.

Suffice it to recall the predictions of Aleksandr Privalov in Ekspert magazine or of Aleksey Pushkov on Centre TV. The president's impulsiveness, his unpredictability, the instincts of a KGB man transferred to politics - everything that manifested itself later went unnoticed at the time because in spring 2003 the eyes of the political classes were closed. But literally one week after the quarrel - and this is the one thing that is clear from the press coverage - all the political commentators in thrall to the St Petersburg securocrats and Rosneft, as if let off the leash, started talking about Khodorkovskiy's political chutzpah. He had apparently decided to give money to the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko.

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