My would-be, might-be book-to- be is a biography of a Russian businessman (Russian Jewish actually, which is significant) named Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Named Who What? The literary agent I am hoping to work with told me it sounds like a grea idea except for two things: No one has heard of me, and no one (in America) has heard of Khodorkovsky. Being that Hillary Clinton could not remember the one-syllable-shorter surname of Russia’s new president (“President Med-Whatever, It’s a pleasure to meet you!”), I hear what the agent is saying.
So let me start with him. Mr. Khodor-Whatever was a chemistry graduate student in the late 1980s who couldn’t get into the PhD. program he wanted because he was Jewish (maybe), so took up business instead. By 2003 he controlled one of the world’s largest oil companies, Yukos, and a paper fortune of $15 billion. Investment bankers swarmed around him like lapdogs. He was flying his private jet between Moscow and Houston negotiating to sell a third or so of Yukos to ExxonMobil. He was flying to China to plan the first Russo-Chinese oil pipeline. Both of these actions would have changed the course of energy history and Russian history. He was not yet 40.
By the end of 2004, he was shipped off for a nine-year term in prison camp a few thousand miles past the end of the world in Russia’s Far East. Bureaucrats took over Yukos and resold it on the stock market for $9 billion or so. The same invest bankers swarmed around them like lapdogs. (Do lapdogs swarm actually? Yo get the point.)
People who came into close contact with Khodorkovsky describe him variously as a visionary, a patriot, a naive young man, a thief, a murderer, and a devil in the flesh. The holders of all these opinions are friends of mine whom I deeply respect.
He is still not yet 45. Just in the past few weeks I have heard knowledgeable people opine that he might get out soon, or they might kill him in prison. One of the biggest investors in Russia told me last week this is a book that needs to be written. A friend in Moscow today prophesied, only half joking I hope, that I could make a million dollars. But are you interested yet, dear anonymous reader?
First, we all agreed, I have to think up some way around that long Russian name in the title.
Tags: Exxon, Khodorkovsky, oil, publishing, Russia, Yukos
