Visiting hours at the colony start at 10 a.m. and at 9:30 beat-up Russian cabs and cars park in front of the entrance; well-dressed Russian women step out of these cars with bags full of food and presents. Today was a special day, because three brand new Toyota SUVs stopped in front of the prison and Khordokovsky’s wife and mother stepped out. They were followed by the Khodorkovskys’ lawyer, Anton Drel, an English-speaking friend and several bodyguards in dark suits, who were helping out with the grocery bags. Inna, Mikhail’s wife, will stay with him until March 3.

The little town of Krasnokamensk has changed a lot since Khodorkovsky became a “resident”. Many business opportunities opened up for the forgotten citizens of this remote province. Journalists almost never leave the town, and contribute to rumors. Some say that Khodorkovsky has his own quarters and chef; others “know” that he’s a man of the people, sharing prison life with ordinary criminals.

One of the jailers was recently fired after he was paid $1,000 by a journalist for taking a photo of the prison’s most famous inmate. That taught everyone a lesson: there are no jobs in this place, and $1,000 is not worth losing an opportunity for a small but stable income. Many inmates have also been offered cash to take pictures with disposable cameras, but they refuse – they don’t want to get in trouble.

Inmates don’t like Khodorkovsky as much as the regular citizens do. Things used to be loose in the colony – pot, vodka, conjugal visits and cell phones used to be overlooked by the prison administration. In exchange for such privileges, the prisoners were “slaves” (the actual word that Russians use) for the administrators, working on their dachas and gardens. The exchange wasn’t that bad, but now it’s shut down. Bureaucrats lost their free labor, and the prisoners lost their precious hours of freedom.

In prison Khordokovsky has written several essays, collected under the title “The Left Turn” and also known as Khodorkovsky’s Letters. They are written as replies and suggestions to the thousands of letters which Khodorkovsky gets each month from all over Russia.

Some say that once he’s done with his term in prison, the attitude of Russian people might change from hatred toward a billionaire oligarch to loving acceptance of Khordokovsky who-is-one-of-us, who suffered like us. And who knows, maybe this is Khodorkovsky’s plan to win the Russian presidency; why else would he submit to prison in Siberia? He could have simply joined Berezovsky and Abramovich in London, where the British love money and don’t care where it comes from - whether from Islamic jihadists or Russian oligarchs.

Khodorkovsky has been very smart in his writing. Mikhail has not attacked Putin personally and has sought to distance himself from political power games. However, in “The Left Turn”, the oligarch identifies a “few” Russian problems: the crumbling of the national infrastructure, Russia’s demographic crisis, Chinese mass migration into Siberia and the possibility of losing control over natural resources, the crisis of the Russian army, the death of Russian science, and Moscow losing control over the Caucuses. At the end of this litany of problems, Khordokovsky presents only one question “Do you still want the Kremlin, dear followers of Putin?”

Khodorkovsky isn’t just being satirical, he marks the actual problem – the presidential elections are coming up and there’s no real candidate who wants the job.

Mikhail, on the other hand, offers his own way of solving the problem. Without getting into details, Khodorkovsky suggests a president to run the country as a CEO runs a corporation; with a young articulate, passionate management team, benefits for the “employees” – the nation, etc. But the numbers just don’t add up. According to the author of “The Left Turn”, by 2020 Russia’s population will become 220 million people instead of today’s 140 million souls, and Russian GDP should rise to 5 trillion dollars from one and a half today. This scenario has nothing to do with reality (please read the articles on Russia's budget and demographic tragedy).

While Khodorkovsky is serving out his ten year term, Abramovich bailed out of the dependence on Russia, and the other oligarchs are all doing the same. Khordokovsky decided to be the martyr of his generation, and by doing so he may be waiting for a title of “saint” from the Russian nation, which would have some political value. It’s just a guess, and though the idea of someone trying to plan that far ahead in Russia seems unreal, this might be Khordokovsky’s plan.