HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

In order to answer that question, I have to explain what I understand by “political activity”, and what my motivation is to engage in it. In the exact and only possible sense of the word, politics is a struggle for power. Not necessarily power for oneself; it can be a struggle in support of someone else. If the meaning and the aim of political activity is not for power, then it’s not politics. It’s fake. Or else the person making such a statement is simply not being honest with themselves and those around them.

People fight for power for two reasons. For some, having power is an end in itself. For others, power is an instrument to obtain other aims. Putting it simply, you can divide politicians into pragmatists, who need nothing more than power itself; and ideologues, for whom achieving power is simply the start of a process. These divisions are, of course, relative and not absolute, but it is useful to bear them in mind.

I was never interested in the concept of power as an end in itself; or as an attribute of the alpha-male; or as the possibility to dominate and enjoy one’s inflated position in the social hierarchy. I’ve been at the very top of society; and at the very bottom, too. I have long understood that formal power, there for all to see, is worth very little. And that real power, that’s often hidden from public view, bears no relation to the politician’s public position. For reasons that will be obvious, I was never interested in using politics as a way to get rich. I was and remained sufficiently wealthy not to have to think about where my daily bread was coming from, and in any case no one can ever earn all the money in the world.

But this wasn’t the main point. I’ve always been very wary – and remain so – of people for whom politics is an end in itself. The problem is that such people have no convictions – nor can they have. Convictions would have made them vulnerable, and made it difficult for them to achieve their goals. In general, other things being equal, it’s easier for an unprincipled person to come to power, as they are unencumbered by any considerations. Such a person can at one moment be “in favour of Soviet power”, and the next moment against; and in either situation they usually win. When there are too many politicians like this, society tumbles into a long period of crises.

Politicians who have convictions are a different matter, although here, too, nothing is simple. If fanatics come to power who hold ideas loaded with hatred for certain groups of people, then they become a threat not only to their own society but to mankind as a whole. Nevertheless, the world would remain stubbornly patriarchal if we didn’t have people in power who hold convictions that express the desire to change society. So the issue as to whether or not I should be involved in politics always brought me back to the question as to whether or not I held worthy convictions for which it made sense for me to go into politics; in other words, to fight for power. Not for my own benefit, but for the benefit of those forces which my convictions supported.

At the time that I was released from prison I didn’t see any particular reason as to why I should become involved in politics in Russia. I held the same general democratic opinions that were supported by hundreds of thousands of other Russians with liberal-minded views. Naturally, I agreed with virtually nothing in the political course that Putin was pursuing, but I wasn’t unique in that. I could express my convictions simply by supporting those whose opinions were close to mine, and this is what I did, even when I was in jail. There was absolutely no need for me to get involved in politics to do this. I didn’t think that I could add anything substantially new to what others were already saying and doing. However, the situation changed shortly after my release.