No single cause has done more than Khodorkovsky’s to inspire Russian speakers everywhere. Three of Russia’s best-selling writers have published their correspondence with Khodorkovsky; composers have dedicated symphonies to him; a dozen artists attended his trial and put together an exhibition of courtroom drawings. In July, a group of Soviet-born classical musicians traveled to Strasbourg to mount a concert in honor of Khodorkovsky. The night before the concert, while the musicians were rehearsing, some 50 of Khodorkovsky’s closest supporters met for dinner. They included his mother; his wife and that of Lebedev; their grown children and their children’s partners; Khodorkovsky and Lebedev’s lawyers; former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and other former Cabinet members who are now in opposition to Putin; and some of the most recognizable faces of the Russian intelligentsia.

Kasyanov and others briefly exchanged the requisite hopeful rumors that Moscow was preparing to release Khodorkovsky. There was meager cause for celebration, but there was at least a little: Khodorkovsky had just been transferred to a prison colony again, to serve his second sentence. This prison colony is not as far from Moscow as the last one, and anyway, anything is better than a Russian jail.

“I Have Faith”

The longer Khodorkovsky stays in prison, the more people seem prepared to listen to his views on how Russia should function. He has published six books and numerous articles while in confinement. The country is desolate: its public space has been systematically destroyed; there are no voices of moral authority able to address more than a few close friends; there is no free politics. Khodorkovsky alone, whether from prison or from a remote penal colony, has managed to fill those gaps. In addition to his formal writings he has corresponded with a number of ordinary people, and some of these exchanges have been published in a Moscow magazine as a regular column. (I was this column’s editor.) Writing in Kommersant, the leading business daily, in the fall of 2011, he provided a detailed argument for taking certain powers away from the Russian president and handing them over to the parliament. “Since 2003, when I wound up behind bars,” he wrote, “presidential power in this country has become increasingly monstrous.”

It is perfectly clear why Khodorkovsky remains in confinement. If released, he may be capable of mobilizing a true mass movement. His family and friends promise to try to talk him into leaving Russia as soon as he is released from prison: they fear for his life. Still, there is little reason to think they will have more success now than they did before he found himself under arrest. At his second trial, Khodorkovsky delivered the summation in his own defense, and his words circulated widely in the Russian-language blogosphere:

It would be no exaggeration to say that millions of pairs of eyes around the country and around the world are watching this trial. They are hoping that Russia will finally become a land of freedom and the law, and the law will be more important than the bureaucrats.

Where support for opposition parties will no longer be cause for persecution. Where the security services will protect the people and the law rather than protect the bureaucrats from the people and the law. Where human rights will no longer be contingent on the whim of the czar, whether he be kind or mean. Where the government will be accountable to the people and the courts will be accountable only to God and the law. Call it having a conscience, if you wish.

I have faith. This is how it shall be. I am not an ideal man, far from it. But I am a man of ideas. Like anyone, I have a hard time living in prison and I do not want to die here. But I will, if I need to, without a second thought. My faith is worthy of my life. I think I have proved it. And what about you, my opponents? What do you believe in? You believe that your boss is always right? That the system is all-powerful? I do not know; it is your decision.

Vladimir Putin, who has been in power in Russia for 12 years, is running for president again, which will probably put him in office for two terms—another 12 years. In other words, he plans to rule Russia indefinitely. With every passing day, Khodorkovsky becomes a bigger thorn in Putin’s side and a bigger challenge to his authority. Which means that, whatever hopeful rumors may be circulating, Mikhail Khodorkovsky will remain imprisoned for a long time to come.