Another Great Leap Forward?
The Economist comments on President Dmitry Medvedev's modernization efforts, citing Khodorkovsky's fate as an example of the conflict between real modernization and the vested interests of Russia's bureaucracy.
The article notes that Khodorkovsky has advocated for "a whole social stratum-a fully fledged modernising class which sees modernization as a question of survival and fulfilment in their own country." In fact, it was precisely this class of people that Khodorkovsky represented and which he tried to foster when he financed boarding schools for orphans, computer classes for village schools and civil-society programmes for journalists and politicians. That was why he was a threat to the system, the Economist explains.
Additionally, the expropriation of YUKOS by Russia's bureaucrats turned Khodorkovsky into a symbol of property rights, similar to how Andrei Sakharov became a symbol of human rights in the Soviet Union.