Despite the revelations of widespread corporate corruption in America, the case of a possibly delinquent tycoon that has generated most publicity is that of the young Russian super-billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The American press has still not disposed of the adversarial relation between the USA and the USSR that was the hallmark of the Cold War. In another one of its singsongs, American newsmen seldom mention Russian president Vladimir Putin without reference to the KGB, where he was once employed. The Russian privatization process frustrated American capitalists (with the press tagging along) not so much because of the corruption as because they were not in on it. The big to-do about Khodorkovsky must have some relation with those unrealized hopes.

Khodorkovsky is being accused in Russia of tax evasion and profiteering. But that is not the way the America press covers his case, although in general it also accepts the claim that all Russian tycoons are crooks. In the press scenario, the 51-year old Putin, who has been stabilizing Russia and its economy, is a Soviet holdover, and the 40-year old Khodorkovsky is a product of Russian capitalism. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that Khodorkovsky was 22 when Gorbachev came to power, that he was 26 when the Soviet empire crumbled, and that he was 28 when the USSR dissolved. A man at that age cannot be said to be the product of what came after 1991 in Russia. So the communist Putin versus the capitalist Khodorkovsky is a lie.

 Logic tells us of another piece of lying: you didn't amass in Russia a fortune the size of Khodorkovsky's-mainly the huge Yukos oil company--at 40 years of age without having been an insider. Basically, then both Putin and Khodorkovsky are children of the same mother. On the other hand, why aren't other crooked businessmen in Russia in jail for the same offenses as Khodorkovsky's? And here the press is probably right when it points out that he tried to sell a large stake in his company to foreigners. So, then, yes, the American press, incredibly though it sounds, its owners anyhow, seem still to be smarting from the results of the Russian nationalist privatization.