Mikhail Khodorkovsky

History is replete with tales of those whose enlightened view of the world became their ultimate undoing. It happened in the early 1400s to John Wycliffe who disregarded papal opposition and translated the Bible into the language of ordinary Englishmen. Wycliffe died of a stroke before he could be charged with heresy and burned at the stake, but that did not prevent a trial and conviction years later that resulted in his unearthed bones being cast into the River Swift. Unfortunately, two similar tales are playing out today in modern Russia, and we can only hope that the endings will be vastly different.The first tale resurrected just last week when we learned that the Russian Ministry of Interior intends to put on trial the 'bones' of Sergei Magnitsky, who suspiciously died in custody two years ago after he testified that Ministry officials embezzled $230 million dollars. This bizarre saga will break new ground as the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history. For those interested in rule of law, this is a particularly outrageous example of the 'legal nihilism' that President Medvedev at first decried but has since accepted. The second tale began in 2003 with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and continues today as the most high profile example of Russian judicial corruption. Khodorkovsky took advantage of the chaotic 'wild, wild east' period following the collapse of communism to build Yukos Oil Company into one of the most profitable businesses in Russia. Yet in the inverted world of Russian justice, adherence to such unorthodox standards was not his undoing.The Kremlin began targeting Khodorkovsky when he applied Western standards to his business practices: bringing in outside Directors, conducting bona fide audits, and paying more taxes than any other private entity in Russia. More worrisome was that Khodorkovsky promoted genuine political opposition and sought to strengthen independent civil society groups. Reco

Feature trailer for Khodorkovsky. This exhilarating documentary chronicles Mikhail Khodorkovsky's transformation from a self-proclaimed socialist to a fully realized capitalist -- also recounting the stunning turn of events that made him one of world's most famous political prisoners.

A damning portrayal of the dirty war between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs--in particular long-imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky--Cyril Tuschi's documentary has made its way to the festival circuit despite much skulduggery on the part of those whom the film seeks to expose and embarrass. In the course of making the film, Tuschi and his crew were harassed and threatened, and the final cut of the film was stolen from Tuschi's Berlin office. We hope it arrives here safely! Using a mix of wide-ranging interviews, archival footage and computer animation, Khodorkovsky tells the gripping story of its titular figure, who went from chemistry student to owner of Yukos, the massive Russian oil firm that was privatized in the hairy free-for-all of Boris Yeltsin's rule, making him one of the country's most powerful men before the age of 40. An open critic of Putin who put his money where his mouth was, Khodorkovsky funded human-rights groups, opposition political parties, and a charity called Open Russia while publicly questioning the leader about political corruption. Since 2003, he has been in a Siberian prison, on tax-evasion charges that David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, called absurdist acts of injustice no more respectable than the railroading of Josef Brodsky

Khodorkovsky -- A documentary about the former owner of Yukos Oil, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and his journey from a socialist believer to a perfect capitalist and subsequently becoming the most known Russian prisoner.