Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a difficult man to like. He is a Russian tycoon, a multibillionaire who got rich during the fire sale of Russian national assets during the kleptocratic years of the Yeltsin era. But being unlikable does not make him a criminal, and neither does daring to challenge Russian strongman Mr. Vladimir Putin, then president, by funding opposition political parties. Those appear to be Mr. Khodorkovsky's real offenses in the aftermath of his second conviction in late December on charges of money laundering and theft. Mr. Khodorkovsky's trial has been viewed as a test of Russia's commitment to the rule of law. If that is the standard, then the country has failed.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was a child of perestroika, using the newfound economic space created by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to get rich. He parlayed bank holdings into majority stakes of large Russian resource companies. He turned Yukos, an oil company, into a petroleum conglomerate that could rival any of the Western seven sisters.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was not content to just be a businessman. Instead, he called for greater transparency in business and political practices in Russia, alarming both his competition and the real power in the country. Shortly after, he was arrested in 2003 and charged, along with Mr. Platon Lebedev, a business partner, with tax evasion and fraud.