The following translated article was originally published in the German magazine Focus.

Mikhail’s Orphanage

Part of the ex-oligarch Khodorkovsky’s empire was a boarding school – now being run by his mother

Boris Reitschuster
Focus, September 15, 2008, pp.156

The Kremlin took her son away and now she must take care of her other 180 children. “I am always afraid of a closure, particularly so in the summer vacation,” says Marina Khodorkovskaya. The 74 year-old retiree is Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s mother. He was once Russia’s richest man, until he challenged Vladmir Putin and landed in jail in 2003. The fallen oligarch put the children in his mother’s hands; boys and girls who had no parents or came from socially disadvantaged families live in the boarding school. Khodorkovsky founded it in 1993 in Korallovo, a good 50km northwest of Moscow, and continues to finance it despite his imprisonment. The scenes still have not left Marina Khodorkovsky’s. “It was a bit like in the war,” she remembers, as the state began its attacks on Yukos, her son’s oil company, and men suddenly entered the school in combat uniforms and Kalashnikovs.

“We have children from war zones still suffering from trauma, who had finally found peace here. When they saw the uniforms and the weapons all their fear came up again and one boy turned depressive,” Khodorkovskaya says in a quiet voice. The school and its grounds were formally confiscated by the marshal because it belonged to Yukos.

Although the harassment has decreased over the past few years the fear has remained. The fosterlings between 11 and 18 years of age live in half a dozen new buildings with their caretakers. This is a model project in a country where orphanages are often terrible institutions.

“My son had his father’s stories in mind; he was a war orphan and rarely saw his mother because she had to work,” Khodorkovskaya explains. Mikhail wanted to help other children that had a similar fate. His father Boris Khodorkovsky was physically affected by the imprisonment of his son, and the 75 year-old now twitches his head constantly. “The boarding school is a mirror of the tragedies in our country,” he says, “We have 29 children here, many of which became orphans through the hostage-taking in the Beslan School and the Moscow Dubrovka Theater. Now we are waiting for children from South Ossetia.”

There were 300 applicants for the school this year, for 50 openings. “My son wanted to make a whole little city here with boarding schools like this, for 1,000 children,” Boris Khodorkovsky tells us, and points to the huge field next to the school building, his head constantly in nervous motion. The plans had already been in the drawer. Then the state came and destroyed Yukos. The son, Mikhail, had privatized the company with questionable methods, just like most of the super-rich Russians. Yet Khodorkovsky made Yukos into an exemplary company with social projects all the way to the boarding school. After he criticized Putin and the state company Rosneft, controlled by Putin’s confidante Igor Sechin, of corruption, he was condemned to eight years in prison for tax evasion after a trial in 2005 that observers considered a sham. Most of his company was sold to Rosneft, the company of Putin’s man, at far below market value.

There are pictures from another era on the walls of the first floor in the boarding school. They show Khodorkovsky next to US President George W. Bush. Today he is sitting 6,152 km away in Chita, not far from the Chinese border, because the law stipulates that prisoners are to do their time in their home region. He lives in a musty 2-person cell with a tiny window that lets in hardly any light.

“The wardens forbid him to go closer to the window to read, he can only read sitting at the table with his face to the peephole. And he sees so poorly anyway,” complains Marina Khodorkovskaya. “They have given him cellmates with infectious diseases on purpose. He has spots on his face because he has not seen the sun in two years. Recently he had to spend another three days in solitary confinement, in a cellar hole. The lid of a water bucket was supposedly not clean and he did not cross his hands behind his back when walking the courtyard.” After his release a cellmate of the fallen oligarch said that the prison authorities had blackmailed him. “If you don’t denounce Khodorkovsky, you don’t get out early.”

“The whole thing is a nightmare,” the mother complains, as she speaks of humiliations and humiliation. Her husband finally interrupts her, “Talk of something else, you can’t get so upset!” “How should I not get upset?” the mother sobs. “When Medvedev became president I had hope for a short time. For nothing. Everything has remained as it was.”

These days Marina Khodorkovskaya has just one wish. “After flying six and half hours to my son last time, they only gave us one hour of visiting time instead of the three hour visiting time. I hope next month it will be three.” For three hours they will sit in a tiny room at the table with a warden. He makes sure that they only talk about private topics and never touch each other. It is not allowed for mother and son to shake hands.