Prague, July 30 (CTK) – The trial of former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has inspired curator Anton Litvin to stage an exhibition called Trial that was inaugurated in the Prague centre DOX Thursday.
Litvin said it is not a reconstruction of the trial, but rather an effort to alert to the internal mechanisms of the Russian judiciary system and the atmosphere of the trials that he said are far from being legal.
Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest oil magnate with close ties to politicians when he headed the Yukos oil concern. In 2003, he was arrested and spent ten years in prison for alleged tax evasion and embezzlement.
He was first sentenced to eight years in prison and he faced up to 22 years in prison in a second trial which the exhibition features.
Khodorkovsky considered his imprisonment as a revenge taken on him by the Kremlin for his opposition to the Russian president at that time and later also to current President Vladimir Putin and for his support for the opposition.
In 2013, Putin surprisingly had Khodorkovsky released. He went into exile. He allegedly wants to support the Russian opposition and help bring about democratic changes to Russian society. Last year, Khodorkovsky opened the Forum 2000 international conference, launched by former Czech president Vaclav Havel in 2000, at which leading world personalities discuss democratic values, human rights and civic society.
Litvin said he found inspiration in Khodorkovsky’s second trial in 2009-10 because it was “entirely politicised. Drawings from the trial were posted on the Internet, but it took a long time before he could stage an exhibition on the premises of a former factory in Moscow.
DOX is the first space where the exhibition has been staged abroad.
The exhibition is based on reports on the trial in the form of comics by Alexander Kotlyarov re-drawn on large boards.
