Jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya were jointly awarded a literary prize by the literary journal Znamya on Wednesday for a series of letters between the pair.
For obvious reasons, Russia’s former richest man — who was jailed for eight years on fraud and tax evasion charges that he says were fabricated and is currently on trial for laundering billions of dollars in Moscow — was not at the ceremony. His daughter, Anastasia Khodorkovskaya, accepted the prize on his behalf.
“When I meet him behind two layers of glass and bars, it is probably one of the saddest but also long-awaited moments of my not very long life. Papa asked me to pass on that you should not lose hope and to preserve a belief in fairness and in the goodness of people,” Khodorkovskaya said, Ren-TV reported.
The letters between the two, which were published last year in Znamya, discuss each other’s lives and the economic and political situation in the country.
“The person has unbelievably grown in character, expanded his horizons, has changed and continues to change in such inhuman conditions,” Ulitskaya said, Newsru.com reported.
A book will appear later this year with Khodorkovsky’s exchange of letters with Ulitskaya and two more writers: detective writer Boris Akunin and science fiction author Boris Strugatsky.
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