From the iron curtain to a broken window

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder Open Russia movement

Seventy years ago, on March 5th, 1946, Winston Churchill gave his famous Sinews of Peace (Iron Curtain) speech. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

Churchill was speaking about the world which had emerged immediately after the Second World War, the world redrawn by him (later Clement Attlee), Stalin and Roosevelt at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, dividing the globe into spheres of influence.

It has become a truism today, to say that we are entering a new Cold War, that the iron curtain somehow still exists or has been rebuilt, but that is not how I see it. There is much that Churchill said which is still relevant, but when I look at Russia under Vladimir Putin, I do not see a modern Joseph Stalin gripping an iron curtain, what I see is a thug at a broken window; a man who has wilfully smashed the “window on the west” first opened by Peter the Great in the 17^th century, with the building of St Petersburg, and re-opened in my country at the end of the 1980s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When I read Churchill’s speech I am struck by two things: the similarity between the dangers that the world faced then, and now; and Churchill’s understanding of the urgent need to find an effective and timely path out of those dangers.

Churchill spoke about the dangers of tyranny, where “control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy …” That sounds very much like the Putin regime, with its sham elections, its emasculation of independent media, its manipulation of the courts.

The failings of the past sixteen years under our lieutenant colonel are a catalogue of deliberately missed opportunities for reform that would have improved the lives of the Russian people; and a roll call of misery and death for Ukrainians, Syrians, Russians  … all sacrificed to satisfy the ambitions of one man. Domestic mismanagement and international adventurism have nothing to do with any overarching grand ideology; the only thing that drives the Putin kleptocracy is a desire to stay in power at all costs.

Neither should we be misled by all those polls, which purport to show that the Russian president has the overwhelming support of the population. With an economy in recession, and no light at the end of the tunnel, I doubt that this support is a positive one; rather, one reason for that support is the visible lack of an alternative, which the Kremlin is determined to beat down. But it is that alternative – a glimmer on the horizon – which offers the greatest hope for a way out of this unsatisfactory situation. No one can say for how much longer Mr Putin will remain in power, but we can be certain that while it might seem forever, there is no such thing in life or politics.

Churchill described the properties of democratic European countries: “The people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities.” That is what I would like to see in my country – Russia.

Churchill was convinced that a strong Euro-Atlantic community was needed for a stable world, and he hoped that Russia would be a part of that community.

That is what I also hope for. But for it to happen, we must rid ourselves of the old policies of appeasement, of thinking that it is better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t. We need to look closely at the contours of a future Russia. This is a task for both Russia and the West: in Russia we must do what we can to convince our fellow countrymen that there are Russians able to provide a better life; and to convince the West that we have a viable plan, that our scenario of change is both logical and possible. For its part, the West must invest its moral, political and economic capital in this new Russia rather than keep the Kremlin regime on life support. As Churchill said, “The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast.”

Repairing that broken window is not for everyone, but somebody has to do it.