Der Fall Chodorkowski

It is obvious that the political elite of Russia handed Khodorkovsky a big fat gift with Yukos. I suspect they saw him as a hip modern guy that could help Russia transition to a modern economy. Implicit to that gift was that he was not to butt into politics. He was cronied up, he could have stayed cronied up, but instead, he bit the hand that fed him. I would have tossed him in prison too. Libertarians are all transactional and profit-driven and for a phony meritocracy based on memory and cleverness (ie deceit). Most people place a higher value on loyalty and fidelity. Khodorkovsky violated the most basic precepts of human decency. The Russian government gave him billions of dollars of value to keep domestic ownership of an oil company. He thanked them by financing opposition candidates, and maybe having a recalcitrant mayor in the oil fields whacked. Yeah, this guy is no worse than American oligarchs, but he is certainly no better.

This reminds me of a guy I met that worked at managing a car dealership. He worked hard, and built it up. The owner gave the top job to his son, not this guy. The guy was outraged, he did all this work. Well what do you expect, to inherit the business just because you showed up every day and did what made sense?

A lot of Khodorkovsky's wealth was paper, stock in Yukos, but you can bet he sneaked out a billion or two for living expenses. I don't see him panhandling for spare change in the many years since he was paroled. Looks like the saga of a socially-inept Asperger chemical engineer that shot himself in the foot.

This is much worse. Clearly, the film is not withstanding the test of time. Who and why financed it - is still a mystery. Too bad there was no politically motivated cinematography during the age of robber barons. Otherwise this one would have been a micro-sequel for "Vanderbilt".