Trial and Error

I followed the recent farcical trial and conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly the richest man in Russia, with some interest. Not because I have any strong personal sympathy for the man himself, who was memorably described by The Economist as 'unlovely', but because the trial was so obviously a politically-motivated miscarriage of justice. It also seems to have sparked a degree of international and Russian public protest against Vladimir Putin, who is able to use the phony conviction to keep a potential rival in prison. Khodorkovsky's acclaimed closing speech in the courtroom drew parallels between his own trial and the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s:

All the names - those of the prosecutors, and of the judges - will go down in history, as did the names of those who took part in the infamous Soviet trials.

Back in Stalin's times, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, a wonderful, imaginative and viciously satirical attack on Moscow's self-interested, corrupt artistic elite. Thus far, the majority of Russian public intellectuals appear to have responded rather passively to the gradual chiselling away of democracy and freedom of speech in their country.

But a month after Banksy pledged nearly £80,000 to pay for the defence of two imprisoned members of the radical Voina art collective, an interesting piece in today's Moscow Times suggests that there is a belated backlash occurring within the country itself towards the recent turn of events.

It's easy to romanticise things, I know. The Master and Margarita wasn't published until 27 years after Bulgakov's death, and that death would have come sooner had the authorities ever learned of the book's existence. But the stakes aren't that high in Russia... yet. And although most artists would doubtless not subscribe to most of Voina's manifesto, perhaps some might at least be starting to agree with one part of the first paragraph:

Rebirth of heroical behavioral ideals of an artist-intellectual, in a manner of Russian libertarian decemberism. Creation of image of artist as romantic hero, who prevail over the evil.