5 - Robber Baron or Dissident Intellectual: The Businessman Hero at the Crossroads of History

Summary

Since being first put on trial in what appeared to be a rigged and politically motivated prosecution, Mikhail Khodorkovsky became something of a heroic figure for the Russian intelligentsia. Certainly, some objective facts, such as the court's apparent bias, Putin's personal involvement, and Khodorkovsky's stoicism undoubtedly played a part in creating this ethos. The media, both in Russia and abroad, directly compared this aff air to the Soviet political trials against dissidents and writers, and even to the Stalinist show trials. For the thick journals, this connection also pertains to the issue of Russian history's cyclical nature, which has been widely debated in recent literary reviews. There is no doubt that the two trials’ familiar setting was a contributing factor in galvanizing the intelligentsia to Khodorkovsky's defense because it supplied a field upon which to project, test, and play out the assumptions of similarity between the contemporary political system and its Soviet predecessor. Along with creating the character of a businessman hero for popular culture, the trials also provided an opportunity to work out a new definition of personhood, such as, according to Oleg Kharkhordin, were revealed by the Soviet trials. I am particularly interested in the construction of heroic victimhood and the ways in which these contemporary notions echo the official Soviet discourse on “scapegoats” and “sacred men and women” (such as the partisan hero or the defendants at the show trials) while invoking more appropriate cultural references, be it religious mythology, the nineteenth-century literary behavioral models, “progressive values,” or patriotism. Khodorkovsky's ability to speak for himself throughout the duration of the trials added a new element to this setting and often subverted his defenders’ expectations. Putin's unexpected order to release his most famous prisoner to Germany shortly before the Olympic winter games in Sochi established a new parallel with the Cold War. My goal is to examine the extent to which contemporary Russian intelligentsia continues to use this discursive framework while promoting an antitotalitarian agenda. To this end I will examine the correspondence between Khodorkovsky and the writers Liudmila Ulitskaya, Boris Akunin, and Boris Strugatsky, as well as various echoes of the trials in Russian and Western media and popular culture.