How Change Can Come from Status Quo
Isaiah Berlin, a Russian-British philosopher and author of the cult favorite Russian Thinkers (even inspiring Tom Stoppard's epically sprawling play "The Coast of Utopia"), has a famous quote which has recently regained its relevancy in Russia today: "Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
That is not an inaccurate description of the discourse we have coming out of Russia over the past number of years. Those obsessed with Russia news must suffer the tedium of repeated ideas, some new and many old, emphasized again and again. In his inaugural address in May 2008, President Dmitry Medvedev said that "a mature and effective legal system is an essential condition for economic and social development, supporting entrepreneurship and fighting corruption." Now, more than a year and half later, these same well meaning ideas are produced (with stronger language) in Igor Yurgen's "controversial" report of the Institute for Contemporary Development.
Just because the idea of political reform in Russia has been repeated now for years from inside the government without tangible results, does that mean that the idea is still not valuable and worth pursuing? It is easy to understand the loss of patience among many in the opposition - Garry Kasparov for example has denounced the ICD report as a ruse to boost Medvedev's liberal credential in the West while the authoritarian drift continues without interruption. As I blogged here earlier this week, this expiring patience can be observed in some of the growing rallies and protests that the Kremlin is struggling to contain. Nevertheless Berlin's point can be observed in other areas, such as the perpetual trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, where the repetitive status quo sometimes appears to be headed toward incremental change. October of this year will mark the 7th anniversary of his arrest, and over those years we have seen many major political statements, many articles written, television documentaries made, and the overstating, again and again, of the basic facts: that show trials have set Russia on the wrong path, that rule of law must be observed, and that Khodorkovsky will be far from the last victim of a weakened, non-independent judiciary.
So do these "new truths" stand a chance of cutting into the established ideas? Some observers believe so, and think that over time Khodorkovsky's reputation is being transformed. According to a new article by Shaun Walker published in The New Zealand Herald/Independent, the political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin is quoted, "With every year that goes by, he becomes seen less as a thieving oligarch and more as a potential political alternative." The analyst continues on to note that the second trial is being carried out based on fear of Khodorkovsky's growing political capital, despite the fact that he has publicly renounced any future in Russian politics: "This is explicable using Stalinist, bandit logic...It's about who is stronger. The authorities think that if they release him, it won't be a display of humanity...It would be a display of weakness. And that is unacceptable."
These changing interpretations of the Khodorkovsky can be seen elsewhere. Just yesterday we saw an artist spontaneously mail out mittens and bitter chocolate bars to a group of Khodorkovsky supporters to remind them of the years he had served in the gulag. Recently Khodorkovsky was presented with a literary award for his popularly received correspondence with the novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya - an unusual association and meeting of the minds that would have been difficult to predict back in 2003. Then there was the hopeful International Herald Tribune opinion piece written by Khodorkovsky, which lamented the country's decline in education, innovation, and scientific achievement, and called for Russia to turn away from the model of a raw-materials exporting country - which is quite a strong statement coming from a former oil executive. Taken all together, these events indicate that the repetition of new ideas does make its own progress.
It's of course far too early to tell whether we can see some green shoots coming from the very long status quo of Khodorkovsky's seemingly permanent trial, but sometimes, so much time spent without change can create change itself.
By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Center