Sunday, January 5, 2014

Komsomolets

Here are the main Mikhail Khodorkovsky's roles so far.



  • Komsomol member
  • capitalist, billionaire, oligarch
  • politician
  • victim of the Putin's revenge

In order to be a Komsomol member he had to speak and act against the basic ideas and values of the western civilization. 

The top level officials of the Russian secret police had to approve his rise to riches, his becoming a billionaire and the taking over of Yukos, the large oil and gas company. Only those most trusted by the Russian secret services had any chance to lead such a company in such a strategically important industry, in a country obsessed with secrecy and deception.

Which of the characters played by Khodorkovsky is closest to the real thing?

A hint comes from Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionist (1869):

14. Aiming at implacable revolution, the revolutionist may and frequently must live within society while pretending to be completely different from what he really is, for he must penetrate everywhere, into all the higher and middle-level social formations, into the merchant's commercial establishment, into the church, the gentry estate, and the world of the bureaucrat and military, into literature, and also into the Third Section and even the Winter Palace of the tsar.