Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Lore & Background

Khodorkovsky was born in Moscow to engineer parents; his father was Jewish and his mother Orthodox Christian. They were opponents of communism but raised him as a conformist, and he became a fervent Communist and Soviet patriot. He graduated in chemical engineering from the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia in 1986, having served as deputy head of Komsomol there. He married a fellow student, Yelena, with whom he had a son, and later met Inna, a student at the same institute, with whom he had a daughter and twin sons. After graduation, he worked full-time for Komsomol but exploited quasi-official business opportunities, opening a private café in 1986 under perestroika. With partners, he opened a Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of the Youth in 1987, which led to founding Bank Menatep in 1989. The bank expanded quickly, using deposits to finance his import-export operations, and was granted the right to manage funds for Chernobyl victims.

Reader's Guide

Khodorkovsky's significance lies in his rise as a symbol of Russia's 1990s oligarchic capitalism and his subsequent fall as a political prisoner. His arrest in 2003 and the dismantling of Yukos under President Putin's government marked a turning point in Russian state-business relations, signaling the Kremlin's reassertion of control over strategic assets. The trials were widely criticized internationally for lack of due process, and Amnesty International considered him a prisoner of conscience. After his pardon in 2013, he became the Kremlin's leading critic-in-exile, re-launching Open Russia to promote civil society reforms. His legacy remains contested: some view him as a victim of authoritarian overreach, others as a symbol of the corrupt privatization era. The European Court of Human Rights found violations in his treatment but ruled the trial was not politically motivated, noting charges were grounded in 'reasonable suspicion.' His estimated wealth, once $15 billion, fell to $100–250 million by late 2013, then rose to about $500 million by end of 2014.

Did You Know?

• Khodorkovsky was ranked 16th on the Forbes list of billionaires in 2003, with a fortune estimated at $15 billion.
• He founded Bank Menatep in 1989, which was granted the right to manage funds allocated for victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
• After his pardon in December 2013, he left Russia and was granted residency in Switzerland, later moving to London in 2015.
• In December 2016, the Dublin District Court unfroze $100 million of his assets held in the Republic of Ireland.