The Russian version of Esquire magazine has published a very interesting and extensive conversation between Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the writer Grigory Chkhartishvili – who is better known for his extremely popular fiction writing under the pen name of Boris Akunin. Each day this week we will publish a section of this important article. Below is Part 4, click here to read Part 1, here for Part 2, here for Part 3, and here for Part 4. Grigory Chkhartishvili: In two of your articles with respect to the inevitability of a turn to the left much, of course, is fair, but the general idea seems to me to be erroneous and superficial. Or maybe I (and very many together with me) understood it incorrectly. [One gets] such a feeling that you have mixed up the name and the essence. Those who among us call themselves communists and socialists are not that at all. Zyuganov and company are no leftists, this is worthless good-for-nothing and powerless fragments of the ancien régime. How can you seriously count on these worthless obkomovists [former functionaries of oblast party committees—Trans.] (the smart ones all long ago passed the initiation rites and joined business) being able to fight for social justice? In exactly the same way as we must have “new rightists”, we also need “new leftists”. They will certainly appear, moreover soon. From the strike movement, from real trade unions, not Potemkin-village ones. They’re the ones with whom it will be necessary to draw up a normal balance of fields of strength, to seek a golden mean between “right” and “left”. Surely you don’t still believe that the CPRF has a future? Mikhail Khodorkovsky: If you perceive the CPRF as “divide everything up” and comrade Zyuganov personally, then, without a doubt, these two symbols do not have much of a future.