• Yukos Affair

The Prague publishing house Human Rights Publishers has brought out a book about Aleksei Pichugin, former employee of the Yukos oil company, Aleksei Pichugin: Roads and Crossroads (A Biographical Essay). Reports from the trials of Aleksei Pichugin have been published earlier, but this is the full story of a man who became a hostage in the war for the control of oil resources and who, in this conflict without rules, managed to preserve his honour and human dignity. Aleksei Pichugin himself, together with his colleagues, companions, family and friends, tells about the intimidation he underwent, the key moments in his trials, and how he had the strength to continue the fight. 

The extract printed below is the preface to the publication in which I tell how and why I came to take up the case of Aleksei Pichugin. 

...Oh the painful struggle of a person to preserve himself, a struggle in which there is practically no hope of success … the right of a natural superiority against stupid, blind, and stubborn forces, that know neither honour, nobility, nor compassion, and are able to do only one thing – to achieve the goals they have set themselves – by any means and always without fail.
Boris Strugatsky, Commentaries On What Has Gone Before ... [Read more]