The screenwriter of a play about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which predicted – before the event – that he would be freed by President Putin, is unsure whether the piece will still be performed.

Screenwriter, Olga Mikhailova was reported in December 2013 to have written a play about Khodorkovsky which was to be staged in the first half of 2014 at the Moscow theatre TEATR.DOC.  In an interview with the Russian online news portal, V Gorode N, she said:

“In the summer I wrote a play about Khodorkovsky and Putin, which can be read in full on the website of the Snob magazine. It all began when Volodya Mirzoyev [director of the TEATR.DOC] suggested I write a play about Khodorkovsky. So I wrote that Putin came to Khodorkovsky and liberated him. At the time, everyone laughed and said: “You are very imaginative. This will never happen!” So when Khodorkovsky was freed, Mirzoyev called me and said: “Tell me honestly, did you know?”

I don’t know whether this project will become a reality. The casting of actors Stychkin and Vitorgan, has taken place. They have read the play and they liked it. But, even though Khodorkovsky has been freed, there are still possible problems with staging such a play.”

The director of the TEATR.DOC, Vladimir Mirzoyev, has posted a comment on the website of Snob magazine, writing:

“It is a rare occasion when a person during their lifetime is turned into a symbol.  To do so, requires a person to distance themselves from their physical body, from their earthly biography, and go into the world of platonic eidos, pure ideas, and uncomplicated meanings. 

Over the past ten years, this happened (literally before our eyes) to two characters – the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and former (and then returned) President Vladimir Putin. They passed through symbolic metamorphosis, and gained mythological status.

The first one – MBK – was in prison, then in a prison colony. He was separated from his family, did not have an opportunity to read as much as he wanted to, to write, to socialise, to travel. He turned into a symbol of unbending personal will, civil courage and human and intellectual maturity.

The second one – VVP – was in the Kremlin, and in the White House. He held senior government positions. He represents, as we would have said in the courteous nineteenth century, the flouting of the spirit of the Constitution, contempt for society, repressive, obscurantist laws, and the destruction of the most important institutions of the State.”