When I turn on the TV in Russia I see a general calmly claiming that our missiles are ahead of the latest American models by three five-year plans. It's a nightmare. We are creating a concept of the enemy, just as they did in the Soviet era. This is a giant step backward.

I ask myself whether Russia is moving in the direction of democracy. I don't believe it is! Bit by bit, Russia is slipping back into an authoritarian empire.

The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said: In a Democracy, portraits of a nation's leader should never exceed the size of a postage stamp. That won't happen so quickly in Russia.

The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the "oprichnina" - the system of oppression.

Everyone in Russia must awaken the citizen within himself.

The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist.

The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots in Russia, and corruption is so widespread, that people from opposition have no interest in changing anything.