28 October 2003 10:01
Russians divided over Khodorkovsky`s arrest
Business leaders are outraged, liberals appalled. But Zoya, a sturdy pensioner in her 70s, could not care less whether security services had the right to arrest Russia's richest man – Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"I am a pensioner, so by default I can't be on Khodorkovsky's side. He is a thief," she said as she vigorously marched through the slush of central Moscow two days after the head of oil giant YUKOS was arrested at gunpoint. "Look, everyone in my neighbourhood wants Khodorkovsky in jail, the bandit."
Among ordinary Russians, views on Khodorkovsky's arrest are polarised between the young, and generally liberal, who see it as a step towards a police state, and the old and poor who regard him and his kind as thieves.
Like millions of other pensioners, Zoya supports any action against the super-rich elite – known as "oligarchs" – who bought up state assets at way below market prices in the chaotic privatisations of the 1990s. "I trust (President Vladimir) Putin. His eyes are so kind. He is a kind man, he understands us pensioners," she said.
But Alexander Tanachev, a Moscow-based lawyer in his 30s, is typical of the small but growing middle class, which sees the arrest as politically motivated and worries the newborn market economy is acquiring a Stalinist face. "The whole thing is outrageous. Our country is turning into a police state, a dictatorship of capitalism," he said.
Russia's media, for the most part restrained in criticism of the Kremlin, almost unanimously slammed the arrest of Khodorkovsky, who was arrested on Saturday and faces huge fraud and tax evasion charges. "Such actions inflict heavy damage on the economy and reputation of our country. There is no doubt this will provoke capital flight," Boris Nemtsov, head of Russia's pro-business Union of Right Wing Forces (SPS), told Vremya Novostei daily.
Some newspapers said the YUKOS attack was orchestrated by Kremlin hawks trying to win influence over Putin and dismiss the more liberal camp formed under ex-President Boris Yeltsin. Newspapers said the move was part of Putin's main strategic plan since he came to power three years ago: to sideline the oligarchs. Two other powerful tycoons, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, both remain in exile outside Russia. "There are more and more signals that there is simply a run-of-the-mill expropriation going on," wrote Russia's popular daily Izvestia.
But despite the media outrage and market chaos unleashed by Khodorkovsky's arrest, some Russians on the street expressed nothing but the apathy which pervades post-Soviet Russia. "I don't follow politics. I've heard the name Khodorkovsky, yes," said Tamara Levchenkova, 48, an insurance company worker. "Arrested, you say? Well, it's his problem, then."
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