The following translation comes from an article authored by Vladimir Pastukhov, PhD, of St. Antony’s College of Oxford, and was first published on Khodorkovsky.ru. Dr. Pastukhov argues that the recapturing of empire in Crimea and rivalry with the United States may be effective in distracting many Russian citizens from pressing issues, eventually the national dialogue will have to return to the fundamental lack of fairness in Russian society.

In addition to imperial nostalgia, Russian history has another differential of the “second order,” which is much more powerful than the first: the Russian people’s desire for social justice, both locally and globally. That’s where all the Russian tsars “got snapped.”

Even when the “Russian car” turns right, its left turn signal works. Of course, Americans offended Russians greatly by cutting their empire down by one third. But they are even more offended by their own Russians, who robbed their state during the privatization. Privatization is an open wound in the souls of the 90s generation that festers stronger than any Crimea. Rampant corruption by those in power is like rubbing salt in that wound. And it does not matter how efficient Putin’s military anesthesia was, the pain cannot go away. Sooner or later the addiction to “Crimean grass,” “American heroin” and other victories will cease to distract from the pressing problems, and “damn question” of property will rise again to its full height, requiring a solution.

Social justice is a red button in the Russian soul. Whoever clicks it, she or he will kick the chair out from under the Kremlin’s policy. The true Russian idea is not empire. This idea is one of universal justice. It was understood in the nineteenth century, but forgotten in the twenty-first century. Vladimir Solovyov, who first began searching for Russian ideas, believed that “the idea of ​​a nation is not what it (nation) thinks of itself in certain time, but what God thinks about it for eternity” and that “no nation can live in itself, through itself and for itself, but the life of every nation is only a certain part in the general life of mankind.” Russia’s social mission is stronger than Russia’s national mission. The inclination toward supreme justice of the Orthodox consciousness stands above the acquisition instinct that drives the expansion of empire. But someone will have to once again turn the ignition key in the Russian soul.

Anyone who manages to organically combine re-privatization in Russia with the idea of ​​modernization of capitalism on a global scale, will become the new Russian prophet. The future in Russia is a turn to the left. That’s what Khodorkovsky wrote about while in prison. But his turn was incomplete: instead of ninety degrees, it was thirty, because in his words/speech he lacked the main thing that people were waiting for – honest answers to two questions: “What is privatization” and “if not privatization, then what?”

Khodorkovsky took part in the privatization. But unlike others, he spent his term in prison and changed his viewpoint yet a year before imprisonment, when during the meeting with Putin and Kasyanov he proposed to revise the results of the mortgage auctions and introduce a “one-time tax” for those who participated in this matter. If he finishes what he has started, he will bring his idea to its logical conclusion and he will have a chance to continue his badly arisen dispute with Putin. Perhaps this will require the next ten years…