Ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky is calling for a "revolution" against Putin's regime.
He calls for a "left" policy - and warns against old Russian mechanisms.
Munich/London - Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has lasted for almost a year - and there is no end in sight.
This hopelessness has to do not least with the person of Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin boss ordered the raid.
And he probably won't end it voluntarily without a trophy (no matter how bloody it is won).
Nevertheless, one thing is clear: At some point, Putin's dictatorship in Russia will end.
After all, the permanent president is already 70 years old - and is under pressure to succeed.
The country must prepare for this day X, says ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
In his book How to Kill a Dragon, just published in German, the Kremlin critic warns Russia's democrats to take precautions - from very practical strategies for the coup to concrete plans to keep the Russians in line during a grueling transition period.
Putin's Russia: Khodorkovsky delivers revolution guide - "As necessary as the surgeon's knife"
Khodorkovsky is himself a colorful figure in post-Soviet Russia.
In the wild 90s, he rose to become one of the richest Russians - with the help of petro-rubles and dollars.
Almost a model oligarch in Russia, which is still liberal to some extent.
Until he messed with Putin and disappeared into the penal camp.
In 2013, the Kremlin boss released his prominent prisoner.
Perhaps because of the upcoming games in Sochi, perhaps because of a request from Angela Merkel, Khodorkovsky speculates.
In doing so, Putin "saved his life," writes Chordorkovsky: "I no longer have any scores to settle with Putin."
Nevertheless, the now 59-year-old Londoner by choice calls for a “revolution”.
She is "unavoidable", even if she has a "very dark" possibly violent side.
"But it's too late to think about it now: the revolution is needed as badly as the surgeon's knife," he says.
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A picture from seemingly distant times: Vladimir Putin (left) and Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Kremlin.
© Everett Collection/www.imago-images.de
Parts of the more than 100 pages read like a five-step revolution guide.
From retreating abroad if necessary and the crucial importance of communication between the "insurgents" to the targeted blockade of prisons and the police and the tactical question of when to call the protest onto the streets.
Anyone who does this must “lead the attack themselves and do so according to all the rules of revolution and warfare,” Khodorkovsky warns.
Otherwise, “people would get pointlessly under the police baton”.
In any case, the threat of violence is always better than its open application.
But once the uprising runs, you have to accept victims, "otherwise there will be even more victims, and above all they will have been in vain".
But the passages on building a “new Russia” seem more astonishing: The ex-oligarch calls for a “left” policy.
Russia's natural gas revenues into citizens' savings accounts?
Khodorkovsky reprimands "unfair privatizations"
One must reckon with a chaotic phase of up to two years, including a “collapse” in business and politics, writes Khodorkovsky.
A provisional government would not have any more time credit if it did not want to resort to dictatorial means itself.
In order to gain sympathy, the former privatization winner proposes transferring the proceeds from Russia's resource sales to individual savings accounts - and expropriating "parasitic capital of the Putin clan" and putting it into funds for the common good.
Khodorkovsky even writes of “unjust privatizations”.
He sees interventions in the inheritance of very wealthy Russians as a further lever in a Russia that does not find "excessive consumption" "indecent".
It always came out like that old joke about the worker hauling home spare parts from various civilian productions from his factory, but when he put them together, it always turned out to be a Kalashnikov.
(...) No matter how many times you can build the President of Russia from parts of the constitution, the result is always a tsar.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky calls for a parliamentary democracy for Russia
Khodorkovsky also expects restrictions on democracy in the transitional phase "after Putin" - the Duma may have to be "dismantled" and a vacant State Council made decisions.
However, he also names clear objectives: A parliamentary democracy could put a stop to “innate autocratic instincts”.
In any case, in the final state, there must be free speech for everyone without exception.
And a nation state must take the place of the Russian empire.
With "free choice for the peoples of Russia as 'people who would rather live together than apart.'" How realistic this is, even after the violations of the Ukraine mobilization, remains open for the time being.
At the same time, the apparently purified ex-oligarch advocates “mercy” as a new basic principle of the Russian state.
“Who among us today would be without sin and want to throw the stone?” he says.
With that, the “we” and the “they” disappear.
Nevertheless, Khodorkovsky makes an exception: “However, there were also the 'model students', those who created and maintained this matrix, who corrupted the nation and turned the state into a mafia state.
You are the main beneficiaries.
And they need to be treated differently.”
Problem Ukraine war: "Criminal" - but the national radicals are threatening in the background
Khodorkovsky also castigates the Ukraine war: Striving for victory is "criminal and amoral," he warns of Putin's possible heirs.
Unlike Navalny's confidante Leonid Volkov in his book "Putinland", Khodorkovsky is not hoping for a humiliated Russia.
The danger of Russia's disintegration is a problem for a provisional government - and possible claims for compensation are another, since it first has to "solve the most urgent problems, or else fall itself and give way to national radicals and other populists".
"In a sense, it wasn't Putin who broke Russia, it was traditional Russia that Putin crushed."
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
One thing Khodorkovsky makes very clear in his small book: in his opinion, Russia would not be saved with Putin's departure alone.
“No dictator is immortal.
But Putinism, Stalinism and autocracy will keep coming back to Russia as long as the socio-political and institutional conditions are in place,” he stresses.
It's always convenient to "personify evil."
Ultimately, however, it is the Russian reality that breaks the heads of state.
"In a sense, it wasn't Putin who broke Russia, it was traditional Russia that crushed Putin." That's why Khodorkovsky makes a sobering prognosis: the expression "post-Putin" is quite abstract.
"It cannot be ruled out that after Putin, a Putin like him will come to power, possibly in an even more malicious form." (
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“How to Kill a Dragon” was published by Europa-Verlag on February 15th.
