A Renegade Looks Beyond Siberia | Business Week

"I have been in the land of the Decembrists, political prisoners subjected to hard labor and uranium mines," declared Russia's best-known prisoner, drawing a parallel between himself and famous Russian dissidents of the past. In full-page advertisements in major Western newspapers on Nov. 2, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now serving an eight-year sentence at the remote Krasnokamensk Penal Colony in Siberia, sketched a vision for "Russia's development for the 21st century," including "a new political elite" willing to "say 'no' to the repressive machinery of a criminal bureaucracy."

......looks as if Khodorkovsky, who was convicted of tax evasion and fraud after financing opposition political parties two years ago, still has political ambitions. Long-standing Moscow rumor has it that Khodorkovsky could have avoided prison and stayed in business had he been willing to cut a deal and flee the country. He even has a business to run......."Prison will rescue Khodorkovsky from his oligarchic image and turn him into a politician of the new generation," says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst linked to the left-wing opposition.

Behind bars, Khodorkovsky has been active politically. In September he ran for parliament but was disqualified after a court upheld his conviction. Supporters say he's working on a political program to be published soon. "His voice will ring like a bell in the political desert created by the present authorities," says Ivan Starikov, a leader of the opposition Union of Right Forces who managed Khodorkovsky's parliamentary campaign.

......few ordinary Russians seem impressed. An October opinion poll by Moscow's independent Levada Center found that only 18% of Russians sympathize with Khodorkovsky -- and 67% don't......His sentence ends in 2011. But while he's eligible for parole in 2007, his team isn't optimistic. "I fear that as long as Putin and the people around him are in the Kremlin, there's no chance of Khodorkovsky being released," says his lawyer, Yuri Schmidt.

.....The former tycoon can't run for office from prison, but he's only 42 years old, and Russian politics are always unpredictable. Three years ago few would have guessed that the country's richest man would now be sewing mailbags in a Siberian jail cell.