Pick of the Issue this week is Julia Ioffe’s "Remote Control," a profile of the exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It isn’t as
good as Ioffe’s "The Borscht Belt" (The
New Yorker, April 16, 2012), in which she memorably describes, among other
things, the use of a pech, a traditional Russian brick oven (“Still, the
oven’s three little compartments provided enough room for frequent rotation of
pans and traditional cast-iron pots – fat-bellied, with narrow bottoms – and
its warm roof, about a foot below the kitchen’s ceiling, became a favorite for
the three young chefs in the kitchen”), and the making of samogon (Russian
moonshine). But it does contain some interesting observations by Khodorkovsky
on life in a Siberian prison. For example:
“The penal colony isn’t scary,” he observed. “It’s full of
average people, and your place in that world depends on you, and more on will
than on strength. You can’t be scared. The result is a vile and filthy life
that is worse than death. And death, well, what is death? The risk is low, just
two or three per thousand inmates a year.
It’s going to take this kind of steeliness to overthrow
Putin. Maybe Khodorkovsky is the man for the job. Would he be an improvement?
His track record as a ruthless exploiter of Russian state capitalism isn’t
encouraging. But maybe his prison experiences have humanized him.
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| Photo by Davide Monteleone |
The Davide Monteleone photo of Khodorkovsky that accompanies
Ioffe’s piece is transfixing. I can’t make up my mind about it. It crops off
about a fifth of Khodorkovsky’s face, including part of his left eye. Why? What
aesthetic is in play here? The photo draws attention to Khodorkovsky’s eyes.
They are hard, determined-looking eyes. It’s not a blasé shot. It’s not a “no
style” portrait, that’s for sure. It’s eye-catching. I guess that’s its point. But
it’s incomplete. That’s what bugs me about it.
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