>> rose: welcome to the program. tonig part one of a two part conversation with mikhail khodorkovsky, once the richest man in russia. his story, he is now telling. >> i had to deal with the problems in jail through resistance. and in prison, there's only one gain that you can play-- game that you can play, and that's your life. you can only stake your life. if you do a hunger strike, that means you need to either put your life on the line, or they don't take you seriously. if you have put your life on the line and then haven't held out to the end, that's it. you are a nobody. i had to do this four times.

i very carefully picked pie battles because like any normal person, i didn't want to die. but i was prepared to go all the way each time, and my opponents understood that. >> rose: part one of a two part conversation with mikhail khodorkovsky when we continue. >> funding for charl yee rose is provided by the following: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: mikhail khodorkovsky is here, he was until recently russia's most famous prisoner. president putin pardoned him in december after more than ten years of imprisonment. he was an oligarch who became wealthy in the era of russia's post soviet crony capitalism, when masked men arrested him at gunpoint in 2003, he was russia's richest machine and the chairman of yukos oil, he and his partner platon lebedev were convicted on tax fraud and embezzle am in two widely criticized trials. amnesty international declared them prisoners of conscience, trapped in a judicial vortex that answers to political, not legal consideration. his story has come to symbolize russia's turn to author tearianism and struggle to democracy under putin. in an impassioned closing argument following his second trial, he told the judge, your honor, much more than our two fates are in your hands, here and now the fate of every citizen in our country is being decided. he has lived in self-imposed exile in switzerland since

his release. last month he relaunched his open russia foundation, started a civil movement to challenge putin's grip on power. i'm pleased to have mikhail khodorkovsky at this table for the first time. welcome. >> hello, i look forward to this conversation, as you know, since you and i met. maybe six or seven months ago. tell me where are you today in your life as you see it. >> i have tried in the past few months to deal with some of the main tasks that i had to deal with in my family. unfortunately, part of these decisions were not in human hands but i still had the opportunity to say farewell to my mother and that, of course, was a big

humanitarian gesture on the part of the russian authorities. that's not usually in its traditions. now i am-- i consider that i'm ready to start the next stage of my life. >> rose: which will be? >> i have finished with business. i consider that i have achieved what i wanted to achieve in it, the plans that i had. and now i can move on to civic activity, i consider it civic activity as i have before, although many in russia call it political activity. i don't object to that. okay, fine, if you think i'm dealing in politics, you may do so. >> rose: okay, but how would you define the specific things that you plan to do now? >> now the situation in russia is not very simple.

as a consequence of all of these national chauvinistic moods that have arisen in the country. a large part of the people have moved over to the side as they see life in the way that the current regime is prop gandizing it to the public. those people who see the situation in another way have now been-- become the minority. it's very important for that half year or a year during which this situation will continue in the public consciousness, it's important that this minority during this period would not feel itself alone. and moscow people do gather in rather large marches for peace, and people can feel that they're shoulder to shoulder to someone who

thinks like them am but if you take smaller towns, ones that aren't as big as moscow, than the situation there is different, of course. the task of that movement, the organization that i have created is to help people who hold a pro european position who are in favor of creation of a law-based tate in russia, to not feel themselves outside of society. you understand that lot os of people want to know the answer to this question. will you go back to russia and will you personally challenge vladimir putin politically and in every other way you can? >> what i am doing in any case is regarded by the current regime as a challenge. i don't know whether putin feels this challenge today he's not-- the movement is not that powerful yet, but the regime as a whole certainly feels this

challenge, and we could even see this but when we conducted even our first conference we conducted in eight cities, all of those groups that took part in that conference were invited to the local-- and-- as concerns returning to russia here it's a question of choosing the most effective place for doing what i want to do. if i return to russia, i will immediately, of course, turn up probably under house arrest, not in prison but now there is this new practice, the russian authorities put their opponents under house arrest so every six months our investigative organs with the approval of president putin extend the term of the investigation of one of the many yukos criminal cases, so i understand perfectly

well that if i return to russia in current conditions, i will not be free to act. so for now it's more comment for me to act from abroad. is there anything in your pardon that prevents you from returning? >> did you make a deal in any way in which you promised not to return to russia? >> no. i did not take any kind of obligations like that on myself. i spoke about how after my release i did indeed need to leave the country. but because my mother was undergoing medical treatment in berlin. but it no obligations to not return. i didn't take anything like that on myself. and literally on my first press conference i said that when i'm asking will i return to russia, i would like to address this question to the russian authorities, please. there is a decision of the

european court of human rights that acknowledges as unlawful the financial claims against me and it's on the basis of these financial claims that there's a legal opportunity if i return to russia, to not let me back out. and so remove those. uncommonly quickly, a session of the russian federation supreme court took place and the european court of human rights decision in my case, and on lebedev was refused. >> your partner. >> and this, of course, is against what is written in our constitution. our constitution says that a decision of an international court is binding in our country as a higher force. but nevertheless, the authorities let me know in

no uncertain terms that if i return to russia, i will not remain free. >> rose: so they want you not to come back by threatening you that if you come back you will be under arrest because they've got these other possible litigations having to do with yukos, correct? >> yes, exactly. i don't know what specifically they'll come up with if i return to russia. but they've let me know in no uncertain terms that it's not over. >> there are those who would like for you to become a kind of mandela. a person who comes back and leaves this country in a different way. is that a mantle you want to put on your shoulders, this idea that mikhail chord coughski has come back to save russia after having felt the pressure of the state and imprisonment in

the tradition of so many other russian dissidents. >> for me, this could be somewhat more ambitious than what i am capable of doing. but without a doubt there are-- there is in russia a large proportion of my fellow citizens whose interests i do understand and whose interests i would like to defend an i would like to do that. these are those fellow citizens of mine who are-- in favor of a pro european path of russia's development. there are not that many in our country even today. but unfortunately they're not unified, they're nod a single political force capable in those cases when we're talking about the interests of this group of

people, of jointly standing up for these interests, i'm going to try to do something about this, whether i succeed or not, i don't know. >> do you have huge sums of money? did you put away a lot of money? because you knee that the state may come down on you, you were warned to get out of the country so my question is there are billions of dollars that you have access to that you can could use in whatever political ambitions you could have. >> i've got enough money, although billions of dollars, of course, is-- it's not a sum like that. but i do have enough money to feel myself independent, at the same time i would consider it incorrect to use the money that i have in order to solve political

problems. first of all, that would be dangerous for my. >> the authorities in that case could apply sanctions towards them. but secondly, in principles, i feel it incorrect when people resolve general political goals without putting their own resources into the solutions, if there's a task that people feel needs to be solved, they give money for this. if people aren't giving money for solving a particular task, then that means that task is not important for these people. >> is your argument with the russian system or with vladimir putin? >> i consider that the current problems of russia

don't have to do only with a specific person with putin, he is without a doubt a representative of this system. he is without a doubt its cornerstone around which this system is focusing more and more. by the way, this is its fundamental instability but the problem is not just him. the problem is that russian society has not formulated for-- has not formulated the question properly for itself-- itself. the question usually is right now as follows, if not putin, then who. and this leads beyond the scope of discussion the whole system itself. i think that the question should be posed differently. if not putin, then what. that's, and what is a normal law-based state with

separation of powers, with a transfer of powers to local government authorities, that is the government closest to the people. this is regular elections to replace people in power through honest elections. and if putin would agree to follow this path which of course i really, really doubt, but still if he did agree to follow this path then there would be no personal aspects for this, for me with this. >> in fact, you have told me before in private conversation, you do not hate him. >> no. i naturally can't say that i love him, that i have good feelings about him. it's kind of hard for me to feel good about a person who has sent me to jail for ten years but i am perfectly

ready to leave all these questions outside the scope of discussion. but unfortunately, even if i leave the personal outside the scope of discussion, we still are left which a problem that hasn't been solved. namely putin does not want to give away power through honest elections because power is his thing. >> well, i don't think that that was the case initially. he's dug himself into a situation where it's hard for him to leave power safely. and he has created in his head this notion that power in the country equals him. that he and his power are

good fortune for russia. and i think that that is a mistake. >> rose: because of prison, i mean, how deep is the fear of going back to prison for you? you have been there, it robs you of ten years, it robs you of years with your family. it robbed you of other things beyond the things that you had to endure. talk to us about what you lost in ten years that you can never get back. well, of course, an integral in a human life between age 40 and age 50 is not the worse part of one's life. and to-- one could have spent it in a lot better way, of course time-- between

when my children were four years old and when my children are 15 years old this is time that i would have loved to have spent with them. of course my wife, my parents would have liked to see me more frequently. then the time that they were allowed to do this in jail. i'm not talking about myself personally because i have probably in this whole system i was probably the most stable element in this whole system.

but i feel very bad for my family, of course. i feel very bad for the family. and for me, this loss that they bore over these ten years, that's something they that can't be returned despite the fact that i'm going to do everything to try to somehow return it. that's life and the ten years, in terms of the physical told on you, was there torture, was there-- you talked about how cold it was and that was part of it. but you said this was not a ghouling a, yes? >> oh, yes, of course. russian prison is not gulag, even in those ten years that i spent within their walls, things improved. and only very recently this year was there a law that

was adopted or at least it passed in the duma that makes the situation of prisoners worse, it factually allows security to beat them without any control. but still, there is not the gulag. and i was able to position myself in such a way in prison that people treated me with sufficient respect. nevertheless, for this, and not just for this, i had to deal with the problems in jail through resistance. and in prison there is only one gain that you can play, and that's your life. you can only stake your life. if you take-- if you do a hunger strike, that means

you need to either put your life on the line, or they don't take you seriously. if you have put your life on the line and then you haven't held out till the end, that's it. you are a nobody. >> i had to do this four times i very carefully picked my battles because like any normal person, i didn't want to die. but i was prepared to go all the way each time and my opponents understood that and all four times they did compromise with me. >> rose: what did they compromise on? >> one of the most lengthy stages of resistance was when my former employee vasily alexania who was very ill with aids, they refused to transfer to a hospital.

and i and other people too, it was not just me, but i and several other people, we managed to get him moved to a hospital. there was also a very difficult situation when platon lebedev was thrown into the dungeon and we were told that he would sit there forever. there were a couple of other unpleasant situations when there was no way out, except to do do this, and that's normal in jail. >> rose: but there were others who also participated in hunger strikes while you were there, not just you? >> of course. but it's hard for me to say how to what extent these people were ready to go all the way.

that's their choice, i never told anybody to join in because your attitude to your own life is an extremely personal attitude. >> and how did you get to the point where you are willing to put your life on the line. >> how did you come-- how did you say si have to do this? >> you know, i believe that there is someone that stands, who stands above us, higher than us. i believe that at some point we is all will need to give an answer for what we've done an not done in life before him. and i believe.

>> that he does not have a good attitude towards suicide. so i needed it to know, will he understand why i did this or not? when i felt that he would understand me then i put my life on the line. >> what was the longest hunger strike you endured? ten days? >> usual-- yeah, the usual was somewhere around 10 or 11 days, yes. one was unannounced 28 days. but the toughest one was not that, the toughest was the 6 day dry hunger strike which mean was drinking also. i really thought that after six days of that i was sure that the end was near. >> rose: and you were at peace with yourself? >> well, i was not afraid any more, let's put it this way.

you know, it's interesting, actually, later after the authorities did compromise, i had to force myself to start drinking again, i honestly didn't even want to drink. a dry hunger strike is when you refuse to drink. on the sixth day you don't even want a drink. >> and what are you feeling? hallucinations. after ten years they released you, you have talked about this before but not on american television. what were the conditions ho did that come about? that you discovered that you would be leaving i knew that there were talks going on on this topic because my lawyers were telling me that such talks were going on.

but i herd putin's talk on tv there was a tv in the camp, of course. and the people who saw him together with me told me that then the talk was about when this would happen, i was convinced that this would take place very quickly because i know the style that our authorities function in. and indeed, it was 2 a.m. in the morning. i was woken up and told that a car had come for me and i was about to be transported. the person who came for me told me that even though he's formally taking me for transportation to another facility, but he said in the evening you'll be at home. what he didn't know was that i was being deported to germany. >> rose: which is where your mother was? >> in this time my mother

had gone through the first stage of treatment and had returned to russia. but they nevertheless deported me to germany. that's, how should i say this, a bureaucratic game, if you will what role did the germans play? >>. >> i think they played an important role. because there wasn't any one single reason why putin decided to release me. he even had the alternative, he could release me or he could start a third criminal case against me. this is a very small window of opportunity when putin was thinking about the olympics and crimea was

still nowhere on the horizon. and those two months that the fact that we were able to use these two moonts that we had is thanks to people from germany, mr. gencher and chancellor merkel. >> rose: there were times in which you could have gotten out earlier, all you had to do was say i'm gillee. >> you know, i didn't try but they offered nobody ever talked about anything with me but i was told publicly many times and once even president putin said this publicly that if khodorkovsky admits his guilt, then we are prepared to quickly and positively examine the question of his

release. >> rose: who did he say that to, the press or to someone? >> did you follow up on that, did anybody say what did you mean? or you just simply dismissed that at hand because you would never admit guilt. >> i never even started discussing it. base it-- because it was obvious for me that this is impossible. >> was it clemency or pardon that got you out? because of your mother, as you said, authorities recognized your mother's illness. as a humane thing to do. was it that? or do you think they just want you out of russia? the formal position of the authorities was that it's a humanitarian gesture but it was? >> actually, i think that

for the authorities, it was not very acceptable to release me at the end of my term that is scot-free without any further obligations. and yet they were not comfortable at starting a third case. because society nobody in society was looking at this as something just and fair any more. so in this situation when you don't on the one hand want to release a person without any strings just when the term ends, and on the other hand you just don't want to start up and obviously unpopular case that society is not going to sport, the humanitarian aspect became a good way out. for everybody. we need to understand that if i had remained in jail

after the start of the cry mean-- crimean event, then of course i would remain there for life. >> rose: why is that, because you were going it to speak out? >> well, of course, i wouldn't have kept silence-- silent but because the authorities in a situation when relations with the west are still already storn up, has no point in having yet another headache in the person of me at large. you doll me this in a conversation we had, that someone from the outside had said to you, and correct me if i don't remember this correctly they said to you, mikhail, you have to come to this point. you have to assume you will never get out. that's the mind-set you have to have.

only then can you sur priv, correct? this was my approach to psychological survival. i said to myself that i in here-- am here for good. and i've got to deal with my life as the life of an invalid, limited, restricted with more freedom than somebody who is sitting in a hospital bed. and i said, well, there are people who survive, who live, who only have one figure their moves, people totally paralyzed and they make scien particular discoveries, how am i worse. >> there is also this. when you were-- the second

trial came out and i quoted from that, many people look at that as the most eloquent thing you have ever said. what went into that public statement at the time of the second trial? in which you defiantly spoke to putin and the russian system i spent a lot of time thinking about what i should say because i understood that i am in prison for good and whatever i would say would make no difference on my fate and at that point i decided i wanted people to

understand why i am choosing such a fate, the fate that i have chosen. it was very important that i be understood. because i have friends out at liberty. i have children out at liberty. i have my family out at liberty and i didn't know will i have another opportunity to tell them directly. so i said what i thought, what i consider, i tried to make it so that people would understand me. it seemed to me that i succeeded at this. >> rose: you clearly did. when you came out there were those who won'ted-- wondered about what the arrangement was, wondered if you would come back to russia. wondered if you would be politically active, you were very careful to say you were not going to oppose putin

and be politically active but fight for the prisoners because you saw experiences in prison, you know, that demanded that you in your own conscience do something. you saw people ready to commit suicide. you saw people who had everything taken away from them and perhaps didn't have the strength that you have for lots of reasons to do anything. but was-- why now? why not immediately when you came out of prison other than you wanted to get to know your family again, you owd it to them to give them time before you gave the rest of us time, was it anything else? >> when i got out of jail i very clearly told about all of the understandings and agreements that i have or

about all that i had written to president putin. i didn't could be seal anything. and i said everything totally publicly. and in particular, i said that i had asked for time until my, the end of my-- my formal release date to spend that time with my family. >> i don't know whether this was important for putin or not but if i asked for this time for that, i intended to, and i did, spend it specifically on what i said i would. i needed this, my family needed this, and this is what obligation that i took upon myself. >> there are those who look

at the tradition of disi dense in the soviet union and russia and i mentioned some of them and you know them well and the stories well. there are those who want you to be more defiant, almost a martyr, are you aware of that? does that, how do you feel about that? they want you to say more my question might be can you say more. are you holding anything back for any reason. do you believe that you have been as defiant of putin and russias you possibly can? there are two approaches to expressing your personal position. the first approach i say what i feel.

and it's not important to me how people will react to my words. in order to remain a responsible person but to take such a position, you have got to be very confident that your soul has a very precise tuning fork, that what you want to say, is what needs to be said to people. i am not a saint. and i don't feel that my soul is such an absolutely precise tuning fork like that. i check what i want to say, with reason. from the point of view of how this will reflect on

those people, on their interests, that i can-- those people who i consider important, and i've told you what group of people i consider important. and i probably haven't said but i will say it right now, what interests i consider important. the interests are, of course, the interests of my country. i check things with my reason, and, and what my reason tells me i shouldn't say, you're never going to hear me say publicly. i understand that there are some people. >> you check with your reason, tell me that again. you check with your reason. >> i check what i would like to say with my reason, for

what kind of consequence will come from saying it. for those objectives that i consider important. i am never going to go about lying. but to restrict myself in what i do say, i do that. and i'm going to continue doing that, based on the reasoning that i have just described. >> what is your fear? do you fear today for your life? do you fear further actions against you? do you fear there's only so far you can go? >> you know, after ten years, i have crossed the line of being afraid of my life, for my life many times.

of course i'm not going to throw myself in front of a moving train. but to say that you can scare me with something, i would have a hard time saying that. at any rate, i don't feel any fear from my understanding of my vulnerable, my physical vulnerability. that's fate. nothing scary about that. that said, of course i do fear the steps that may threaten those objectio

objection-- objectives it that i serve. i do not want for someone to some day say, that he could have done or, and should have done better, but didn't because simply because, well, he didn't bother to think about it. they may say that he didn't have enough talent. that's fine. i only have as much talent as i have, no more. i only have so much strategic thinking as i have. but i'm going to try to do the best to-- towards the achievement of my goals. >> there is this about you. there was nothing about you before all this happened to you that would have predicted

how you would respond. is there? because people have said to me, i knew him as a businessman. and its strength he's shown, the values he's shown, the courage he's shown, i did not know were there. is this the case in which mikhail khodorkovsky simply had history thursday on him and he respond-- thrust on him and he responded the way he did. in other words, this is simply a case of a man who became something beyond what he ever imagined, because he had to? >> i think you are absolutely right. i have spoken with many people who took part there

combat. and nearly all of them, well, at least those who felt that they were able to speak openly about it, told me that none of them knew about himself how he would behave in combat. until that moment arrived. we just don't know. and i think that within each of us, there is something that under certain conditions forces us to jump into the water for a drowning person, or to run into a flaming house to save a person. and it's how deep this is. and can this be taken out to the surface, will we succeed in doing so when the time

comes, when you need to? you are not going to find that out until it actually happens. when i worked at the oil company and one of our oil tank farms started, went on fire, that's a very dangerous situation. and the firemen needed to run in there to prevent the fire from spreading. you need to go 150 meters in a special suit at a temperature of 800 degrees. some of the firemen decided to do it. and another part, even though they had been training all their lives for this, they couldn't do it. after that, we started conducting training every year. and those people who weren't able to cross that line, they stepped aside

themselves, but none of them knew whether he could or he couldn't until he had to do it immediately. >> and that was your case too. >> how did you come to find out that that was within you? to resist? were there moments in which you said no, i can't go this far. i will not submit. >> no. you know, every moment i ask myself can i let myself to step, to step back here? no. i can't retreat. okay, so there's no way out. then you got to move forward, here, can i allow myself to retreat? if i can, fine. no problem. compromise. if i can't allow myself to retreat, then if i can't sign an admission of guilt because that would put under

threat people who are absolutely innocent of anything, who are then going to be toll but your boss said that are you all thieves, well, then you must be thieves i can't allow myself to do that. so there's no place to retreat. so there never was any vacillations in my soul or anything like that. >> do you feel like a hero? >> no, of course not. you know, a hero ask something that stands out in prison, such people, at least in russian prison, the kind of people have to experience a deep deep trials and triblations because they can't go, can't do otherwise. there are a lot of people

like that. maybe ten, 15%, nass's nearly 100,000 people are like that. who refuse to take it upon themselves to just sign a statement that they committed a crime that they didn't commit, or who have refused to finger somebody else. and end up in jail themselves. like i said, 10, 15%, i'm just one of those. yeah, my case was a lot more louder. >> rose: let me go back to russia. what is the future for russia, near and long term? >> today the economic situation in the country is not very good. as we're now -- >> notwithstanding oil prices. >> yes, we're spending those resources that we've accumulated. the reasons are understandable. right now the oil industry, the oil & gas industry has for the most part fallen

under the political nomenclature's management and these people have reduced efficiency in a great way. so despite the high prices, expenld tures are grossing at the same way or faster. >> nevertheless, we still do have reserves. i think for some period of time there should be enough of them. after yards, if prices don't jump up to 200 barrels a-- 200 dollars a barrel, i think that the authorities are going to have a harder time explaining themselves to the people why it is that the people shouldn't partake in running the government despite the fact that the authorities themselves seem incapable of providing them with constant growth in their standard of living. the social contract with,

between the people and the authorities was just that. you insurance constant growth in our standard of living and we don't medal in rung the country. >> rose: right, you take care of politics and we have a good life. >> yes, exactly so. strategically, if we talk about the strategic future, we understand that all author tearian regimes, especially ones like this, that aren't even based on an ideology but on an individual person, are highly unstable. because in order to retain power, such authoritarian leaders are forced to burn the field all around themselves. which is what putin is doing. and when such a person leaves, and we all leave sooner or later, what will grow on this burnt field,

whether it's going to be grain or wheat, is hard to predict. but the situation is not going to be easy. that's pretty obvious. i fear that putin is going to bring the country to a crisis much more quickly than many would like. people after all do want to have a little bit more time to live not having to think about difficulties. >> what is the scenario for bringing the country to that place for putin? how does he in your own scenario come to a point where he has failed and there is a consequence. >> there are three variances. the first scenario, is he

keeps-- he lives until his natural demise. the way brezhnev did. that's a sad situation but maybe not the worst for the country. >> a natural death. >> the second is also rather customary one, that's the khruschev model and a bunch of russian leaders before them, in a tougher, left as a result a conspiracy within their entourage. it's unpleasant but also not necessarily the most frightening. and finally the third way is the refeet of 1917, when a

person brings the country to an economic crisis, and we are certainly moving right in that direction. and when the question of power comes out, the question of what will be the power goes out on the street, and here russians don't hold back. we don't know how to. if we start that,. >> rose: it's over. >> yes. >> rose: and is the-- is that-- how long do you believe that could happen in russia? the 1917 scenario? >> everybody understands that this is the worst of the scenario os. but that you can't rule it out. everybody understands that. >> rose: the kind of thing we're seeing in hong kong today, or we saw in the arab spring, or we saw in -- -- and what's the most unpleasant is that nobody can ever predict this.

it's just that suddenly it happened. >> nobody can ever predict the match that lights the fire. >> if all of us in russia remember this story with the last dictator of romania. a month before his downfall, a huge number, i mean really got a huge number of votes. and then literally a month later, well, i don't know, that's it. it was over. he finishes and it's a frightful finish. nobody needs that. because in this situation, what can come to power is anybody at all. >> rose: on its next charlie rose, part two of our conversation with mikhail khodorkovsky. join us.

>> for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlie rose.com.

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