I agree, it's an interesting read. I knew very little of Khodorkovsky prior. During times of great transition the industrious people can make huge amounts of wealth. Makes me want to get in to importing/exporting.
It seems that the way MK got his wealth seems very unscrupulous. On the one hand, I understand what the article is saying, and I agree that he is industrious and very intelligent. On the other hand, he got rich by having connections and exploiting the system , by getting money from the university and then buying his oil company at ridiculous prices. It is the former "owners" of this oil wealth (the citizens of the former USSR) who are "on the other side of the deal", the people who are exploited while he makes a profit. I think it is a very conflicting situation.
I feel really conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand he exploited the system and made a bunch of money on the backs of the Russian people. But on the other hand it's very obvious that he was a better businessman than the other oligarchs who did very little to improve their assets. If not Kodorkovsky, someone else would have bought Yukos and just sat on it, and I wonder if that would be any better.
Exploitation is par for the course when you're talking this level of wealth, imo and at a certain point you've got to have the connections to get that wealthy. At first you have the connections and then you start to buy the connections. Kordorkovsky would make a pretty fascinating character for a film, don't you think?
Yeah, but just because it is "par for the course" does not make it okay, I think. He probably would make an interesting film character because people are very interested in the "ruthless capitalist trope", and he is very intelligent.