Khodorkovsky will fight from afar

Former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky can hardly be blamed for not wanting to get back into Russia’s political fray as an opponent to President Vladimir Putin. Ten years in detention, most of that time spent in a Siberian prison camp, would sap the energy of the most determined rebel.

There can be little doubt that Khodorkovsky regrets his initial decision that Russia’s new generation of wealthy businesspeople, the ‘oligarchy’, of which he was the richest and natural leader, could control the country’s strongman.

So for now the man who was once among the world’s richest, will enjoy the small fraction of wealth he was able to spirit away overseas in a semi-retirement spent in Germany and elsewhere. He is adamant that the struggle for power in Russia is not something in which he wants to be involved. He will not even return to the country for fear that he might be detained again, or at least have his passport confiscated.

But he will travel; he will give interviews and probably write books. His insight into the workings of Putin’s Russia – and the details of how opponents of the Kremlin are dealt with – will make interesting reading.

It should be remembered that Khodorkovsky is no saint. He started his business empire in the 1980s when then President Mikhail Gorbachev began to open up the Soviet Union to the world. After the Soviet collapse he was first on the bandwagon buying up former State-run enterprises at bargain basement prices and accumulating huge wealth through the acquisition of Siberian oil fields as the head of his giant company, Yukos.

A chancer who rode his luck until it failed him, Khodorkovsky was probably guilty of at least some of the things for which he was eventually charged – involving fraud and tax evasion – but then so were a lot of other people.

Getting on the wrong side of the Russian leader is a dangerous business and Khodorkovsky is right to fear Putin may be setting himself up as a President for Life. Centuries of living under the absolute rule of the Tsars followed by the equally totalitarian regime of the Soviets have left Russians with little experience or understanding of democracy. For many the authoritarian rule of a strong leader is preferable to the ‘democratic’ turbulence of the 1990s.

Putin has filled the gap: Two terms as President, followed by four years as Prime Minister with a trusted ally filling the presidency and now president again, means that his hands have never been off the levers of power. So far he has circumvented the Russian Constitution rather than destroyed it, but Khodorkovsky will not be the only figure in the West watching and waiting for the next move from the man in the Kremlin.