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He expected compassion and support from his friends. Most hastened to forget him. He believed in the ethos of national service, and in President Putin. His president and former colleagues put him behind bars. By his conduct, Pichugin has salvaged the honour of all who regard themselves as patriots and do not wish to feel unclean about it.
Against him in the unequal fight stood also the security services - the men in the blue-striped epaulettes. The men who recently discarded those epaulettes for a career in the state machine of their securocrat president. Aleksey Pichugin's case serves as clear proof to some of our liberals that the world is not at all black and white - although it is a conflict that some of them relish.
Aleksey, you salvaged the honour of those in the service. And you salvaged my honour. I do not know how this will end. I do not know if they will break you. After working on this book, I could never bring myself to condemn you: you held out for so long and so strongly. Did you ever believe in the brotherhood of man? Let me shake you by the hand.
In place of a postscript
The first victim
How and for what Aleksey Pichugin was convicted
The breakneck and total sell-off of state property that took place in the 1990s, with legal safeguards either imperfect or absent, was more about politics than economic reform and was designed to pull the rug from under the Communist Party.
The public regard it as an asset grab. Given the impunity and corruption that permeated every part of officialdom, the result was economic implosion and a sudden stratification of society by property. This was bound to cause much, and justified, public anger.
But it was the authorities that created this environment. The legal and regulatory framework of that time had been passed by representative and executive bodies under pressure from various political, economic and ideological camps. That these laws were bad and full of holes was not the fault of the individuals and businesses that operated within them.
The people who are to blame are first and foremost the legislators, the executive authorities, and the head of state. To complain that certain individuals took advantage of terms offered to them is unfair, illogical and simply absurd.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was at Columbia University on 26 September 2003 and, replying to questions from students, came out against reviewing privatisations in Russia. His reason was that "if we were to start re-examining them now, the redistribution of these assets would do more damage than the actual privatisation".
But, as practice shows, what the president says in public does not always tally with what happens in real life. Because a little earlier, on 2 September, Russkiy Zhurnal published an in-house note by Gleb Pavlovskiy, head of the Foundation for Effective Policies, on how presidential administration members, big businessmen and the security bodies were working towards a new carve-up of major corporations.
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