His hands numb after queueing in the bitter cold outside, my father squeezes into a phone booth and dials my number. Thousands of miles away in the US, I hear his dear voice, still husky from the frosty Karelian air. His tone has its usual calm; his mood is upbeat.
We were speaking just days before Vladimir Putin’s presidential inauguration, yet we weren’t talking about what his third term would mean for Russia and its citizens. That much we already know based on the 12 years of his rule. Rather, we talked about what needs to be done in the years ahead, because the future of our country is no longer up to Mr Putin; it now depends on its people. The man in charge may not have changed, but we Russians have.
For me the struggle to make Russia a freer and more just society is personal. My father, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of Yukos, once Russia’s largest company, has been locked up for more than eight and a half years on false charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. His only crime was standing up to Mr Putin. He angered the Kremlin by financing opposition parties and denouncing the scale of corruption. I have not seen him since 2003, when I went to college in the US; he has never met my daughter Diana, who is now 2 years old.