First socialist, then capitalist, and finally a felon – the life of Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky has all the makings of a screen epic. But are any of the stories true that are told about the man who was once Russia’s richest oligarch and is now Putin’s most inveterate opponent? Was he really an ardent Communist and Komsomol secretary who, having become infected by ‘new thinking’ suddenly began spreading the methods of free market economy throughout the Communist Party’s youth league? Or is his the story of a Jewish boy whose background prevented him from rising through the ranks of the Soviet Union’s arms industry, and who therefore decided on a career in the party – which was to take an unexpected turn under Gorbachev? And, after all those years in finance, where did he suddenly acquire his sense of political mission that propelled him to confront Vladimir Putin and which continues to ensure that charges are being brought against him, Russia’s most famous prisoner?
Cyril Tuschi: “Everyone and anyone has something to say about him. Khodorkovsky’s career has been one of dramatic highs and lows – and
the hard fall he has taken measures up to any Shakespearean tragedy. KHODORKOVSKY seeks to peer behind the mask of the charismatic phantom that is Mikhail Khodorkovsky; it looks beyond his demonisation through Putin’s propaganda – but also beyond his idealisation as a mere victim.”