Khodorkovsky Sees 1917-Like Crisis Nearing Under Putin

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tycoon who spent a decade in President Vladimir Putin’s prisons, said Russia is nearing an economic crisis that could fuel an uprising similar to the country’s 1917 revolution. 

“I fear that Putin is going to bring the country to a crisis much more quickly than many would like,” Khodorkovsky, 51, said in an interview with Charlie Rose in New York. Russia could end up seeing “a repeat of 1917 when a person brings the country to an economic crisis, and we are certainly moving right in that direction.” 

Deteriorating economic conditions may spark the sort of discontent that helped put an end to Russia’s Czarist autocracy a century ago, he said, referring to the turmoil that swept the Bolsheviks into power under Vladimir Lenin and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Russia’s economy is teetering on the brink of recession as international sanctions linked to the conflict in Ukraine stunt growth.