Parents prepare for harsh lesson in Russian justice

From Jeremy Page in Koralovo

THE rain gushed down as Marina Khodorkovskaya stared wistfully across the 19th-century estate outside Moscow that has been her home for most of the past decade.

Looking at the elegant grounds, there are times when she feels nothing but pride for her son, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the oil empire that he built out of the ruins of the Soviet Union. Then she thinks about the prison sentence that he is likely to be handed today and wishes that her only son had listened to her advice.

“He would have made a great chemist,” Mrs Khodorkovskaya, 73, told The Times, leading the way into the boarding school that she runs here with her husband, Boris, 71. “I warned him about going into business, but he was so convinced that things had changed and that he could make everything OK.”

Her worst fears look likely to be realised today when a court in Moscow pronounces its verdict and sentence on Mikhail Khodorkovsky — founder of the Yukos oil company and once Russia’s richest man — after a year-long trial for tax evasion and fraud. Prosecutors have demanded ten years in prison. In March, a former Yukos security chief was sentenced to 20 years for murder.

The verdict on Mr Khodorkovsky’s had been set for April 27, but it was postponed at the last minute, apparently to avoid awkward questions from President Bush and other leaders attending VE-Day celebrations in Moscow on May 9.

“We’re not expecting anything good. The State has arranged everything,” Mr Khodorkovsky Sr said. He looked pale and tired, and his head and hands shook from Parkinson’s disease.

For some Russians, a stiff jail sentence is fitting retribution for a man who made an overnight fortune in the shadowy privatisations of the 1990s. For others, it is a Kremlin-sponsored travesty of justice to punish him for meddling in politics.

For his parents, it is a crippling blow in the twilight of their lives. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, they led unremarkable lives, working in a machinery factory in Moscow and sharing a modest two-room flat, which they still keep, in the north of the city.

They moved to Korolovo in 1994 after their son founded a private boarding school — Russia’s first — here for orphans and war veterans’ children. Now the school has some 150 students, including victims of the Beslan school siege. All study for free, but it has only enough funds for another year. Lawyers have told Mrs Khodorkovskaya that the State could confiscate its assets .

“We’ll probably move back to Moscow and rent somewhere close to Misha’s prison, so we can visit often,” Mrs Khodorkovskaya said.

The couple have seen their son for just two hours a month since he was arrested in October 2003. His mother said that he was very cheerful on the last occasion. “He’s not sorry about anything. He thinks he has set an unfortunate example, which shows the rest of the world what kind of regime this is.”

Their son spends most of his time reading history books in the cell that he shares with three or four other inmates.

“He was never an ordinary person — he was always very independent and curious,” Mrs Khodorkovskaya said. His dream, she said, was to expand the school, which embodied his vision of a new Russia.

Last month it organised a pageant to mark the 12th anniversary of the founding of Yukos. Children in immaculate uniforms performed songs and dances using state-of-the-art equipment in front of a large screen saying, “We thank the Yukos oil company”.

Then they swore-in the “president” of the school, which also has its own parliament and government to teach the students about the workings of democracy. “President” Vadim Murayev, 15, said the students were hoping that Mr Khodorkovsky would be acquitted.
His parents, however, appeared to be resigned to his fate. Halfway through the pageant, they mounted the stage to address the students. “Whatever happens in the future, I hope these 150 children will keep us in their hearts,” Mrs Khodorkovskaya said.

Her husband added: “Money comes and goes, but friends are with you for ever.”

(From The Times, 5.16.2005)