Prison has long held a near-mythic place in the Russian psyche, with Siberia a cleansing way station where aristocrats plotted revolutions and nuclear physicists turned into peace activists. Khodorkovsky claims that legacy now. "Prison," he told Grigory Chkhartishvili, the novelist, "makes a person free."

In his first 40 years, Khodorkovsky had been many things -- a hustler and a banker, an oilman and a philanthropist -- but never a political thinker or writer. Putin has turned Khodorkovsky into both. His most famous polemic, published during his first year behind bars, surprised everyone by denouncing the liberals who had run Russia in the 1990s -- and whom he had supported with millions of dollars. They were "dishonest or inconsistent," "effete bohemians" who "cheated 90 percent of the population" and "turned a blind eye" to the corruption of privatization. They should feel "a sense of shame." As for himself and his fellow oligarchs, "We were accomplices in their misdeeds and lies."

If this seemed a prison conversion, Khodorkovsky continued to turn heads with a series of further statements known as his "Left Turn" essays, arguing that Russia should turn away from the policies of the democrats and accommodate the grievances of old Communists by restoring welfare programs and addressing complaints about privatization. "A leftward turn," he wrote, "is as necessary as it is inevitable to the fate of Russia."

Ever since, Khodorkovsky's writings have been extensively parsed and debated by those who still care about politics in modern Russia, a string of interviews, letters, and essays that collectively add up to tens of thousands of words and a philosophical treatise for the new era. "I can define myself as Voltairian," he wrote at one point, "in other words, a supporter of free thinking, of freedom of speech." He has bristled at the "racism" of the assumption that Russians are genetically unsuited for democracy, argued that judicial reform is a prerequisite for dismantling authoritarianism, and mused about God, freedom, and the mystic power of the Russian soul. He even changed his views on the massive transfer of public wealth into private hands that he helped engineer to his own benefit. "Russians have a right to be angry," he told us, "as the privatization was not too fair."

Over time, a new Khodorkovsky emerged, a self-conscious cultivator of the image of martyred democrat. The change captured the imagination of people like Chkhartishvili. "Putin didn't surprise me at all," Chkhartishvili told us in a stylish Moscow restaurant. "Khodorkovsky surprised me." In 2008, Chkhartishvili published his months-long correspondence with the tycoon in the Russian edition of Esquire, a literary sensation that prompted authorities to throw Khodorkovsky into isolation again. As a writer, Chkhartishvili told us, "the most dramatic thing to watch is when a big person suddenly turns in a direction absolutely different. Take Andrei Sakharov, for example. There are a lot of similarities."

Just a few years ago, such a statement would have been heresy. With his Nobel Peace Prize and clarion call of resistance to Soviet totalitarianism, Sakharov is the patron saint of the few aging Soviet dissidents still active in public life today. But many veterans of the human rights movement have come to embrace this view of Khodorkovsky, however reluctantly. They see him if not as a hero, then at least a convert.

When we sat in a smoky Moscow literary hangout last summer, Lev Ponomaryov, a courageous human rights campaigner since Soviet times, remembered his only meeting with Khodorkovsky, just 10 days before his arrest. Khodorkovsky promised money for his human rights group. "He was ready to support us," Ponomaryov said. "He told me, 'We are tired of being afraid.' He meant he was too cautious before."

That is also increasingly the view of those who know Khodorkovsky the best, the family he left behind to puzzle over the sacrifice of the man who brought them dizzying wealth and then recklessly cast it aside in a feud with Russia's leader. In Moscow's distant suburbs, where his 76-year-old father and 75-year-old mother still live in an 18th-century aristocrat's compound now housing a boarding school for orphans that he founded and they run, there is plenty of confusion over that choice.

Their house was a shrine to the imprisoned son. Baskets of dying flowers were scattered about, arrangements sent to mark his latest birthday behind bars. His father, Boris, eagerly pulled us into a side room to see a massive portrait of his son as Jesus sent by an admirer. So it was a little bizarre to notice pictures of Khodorkovsky shaking hands with Putin in neat frames in the parlor. One was taken just weeks before the campaign against Yukos began, with the caption: "The president of the Russian Federation thanks Yukos." Why pictures of Putin? "You have to know your enemy by the face," Boris said. Marina sighed. "Putin will never let him out," she said.

A few weeks later, we met Khodorkovsky's 24-year-old son, Pavel, in New York, where he lives in self-imposed exile. It was the day after his honeymoon, and he looked so much like his father that he was easy to pick out of the crowd at an Italian restaurant. His cheeks rosy red from a week in Mykonos, he was nursing jet lag with a lunchtime mojito. Fifty-six guests had come for his wedding in a French château with 365 windows, one for each day of the year. Clearly, there is some money left of Khodorkovsky's billions. Pavel would not elaborate except to say, "The family is not in trouble."

But for Pavel, it remains hard to reconcile the father he still admires with the man who landed in this mess. Until the latest trial, Pavel said, his father did not see things for what they were. We noted that Khodorkovsky had told us that perhaps he had been "naive" in not fleeing Russia when he could. Pavel said this is a change. No longer is his father just blaming people around Putin. "He came to understand Putin had sat back and allowed it all to happen," Pavel told us. "He's now less naive, less idealistic."

Arguably, so is Russia. The hope and optimism of two decades ago is gone. Russians harbor little romance for democracy, jaded by the political and economic tumult of the 1990s that they came to associate with the term. Nor do most of them see the billionaire dissident as a hero. Putin is supported by many, accepted by most. Pockets of opposition emerge from time to time, but to little effect. On Khodorkovsky's birthday last year, a handful of protesters near Red Square was arrested. No one much cared.

Khodorkovsky whiles away his days in court. One day we sat next to Nastya, his daughter, who was 12 when he was hauled away. Now turning 19, she wore a turquoise top, an ankle bracelet, and blue jeans with colorful swirls. She brought a report card that was passed into the glass cage. Khodorkovsky smiled broadly and flashed a thumbs-up. Nastya was the only relative to show up in court when we visited. His wife, Inna, attends the trial only occasionally, and their twin sons, who turn 11 this year, are not allowed in the courtroom because of their age.

After a year, the prosecution wrapped up its case and Khodorkovsky opened his own defense in April with a blast at authorities. "I consider this case to be political and corrupt, orchestrated by my opponents to prevent me from walking free," he told the court from the glass cage. Brandishing two glass jars of oil his lawyer had smuggled into the courtroom, he mocked the notion that he stole his own oil: "To speak of me defrauding myself, in my opinion, is absurd." A verdict could come this spring. Because Russian judges convict more than 99 percent of the time, even in cases of no interest to the Kremlin, few doubt the eventual outcome, which could result in 22 years behind bars. "It's quite obvious there are people who want him to stay in prison forever," said Vadim Klyuvgant, his lead attorney.

Yet Khodorkovsky's support sometimes comes from surprising places. The guard who checked our passports each morning as we entered the courthouse confessed that she has been secretly sending Khodorkovsky letters of support in prison for years. Gennady Gudkov, a KGB veteran now serving in parliament as a member of Putin's party, told us he saw the new trial as "senseless" overkill. "Basically, Russia for the past few years got used to being silent," he said. "Now they shut up completely."

When he is not in court, Khodorkovsky spends 23 hours a day in a 35-square-foot cell with several other men and no fresh air or sun save for a few shafts of light through a tiny ventilation window. "They're sleeping, they're eating, they're defecating, they're urinating, they're reading books, they're preparing for court -- all in one room," said Karinna Moskalenko, another of his lawyers. A glass cage, a Siberian prison, and a stuffy jail cell would change anyone. "He's become less refined," Klyuvgant said. "He's become harder. He's not afraid to be tough in situations when it's needed."

He needs to be tough, as tough as Russia itself. "I have been psychologically prepared to spend my entire life behind bars," Khodorkovsky told us. "I cannot say that makes me happy. But it feels easier this way."

OXANA ONIPKO/AFP/GETTY

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