Detained Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky urged business leaders on Monday to accept President Vladimir Putin's leadership and share their wealth.
In what looked like an extraordinary climbdown by a man who once publicly defied Putin, Khodorkovsky said in an article in business daily Vedomosti it was time unreservedly to accept the president's authority.
"We must end the pointless attempts to cast doubt on the president's legitimacy. Whether or not we like Vladimir Putin, it is time to recognize that the head of state is not merely a physical person," he wrote from Sailors' Rest prison, where he is awaiting trial on tax evasion and fraud charges.
Some analysts suggested the lengthy treatise by the former chief executive of oil giant YUKOS might also be a bid to find a way out of the bitter legal battle.
"The president is an institution guaranteeing the country's integrity and stability. And may God prevent us from living to see this institution collapse...The country's history imposes this: bad authority is better than no authority at all."
Putin, Khodorkovsky wrote, was in fact a liberal force in a country where nationalist and hard-line parties gained ground in last December's parliamentary election. Putin's allies won a large majority and liberals were all but shut out of parliament.
"Let us think this through: Yes, Putin is probably neither a liberal nor a democrat," he wrote. "But he is still more liberal and democratic than 70 percent of our country's population."
Khodorkovsky, arrested at gunpoint last October, has been denied bail on grounds he could influence the investigation.
Many analysts believe the legal case being mounted against Khodorkovsky and another key shareholder Platon Lebedev, committed for trial last week, was orchestrated by the Kremlin in order to rein in the tycoon's political ambition.
Khodorkovsky's arrest plunged into confusion a merger between YUKOS and rival oil firm Sibneft, which he jointly masterminded with top Sibneft shareholder Roman Abramovich. The two companies agreed formally to part ways.
But unwinding the merger is proving messy. Sibneft foiled an attempt at the weekend by YUKOS, which owns 92 percent of the smaller company's stock, to impose a new board of directors in a sign the two sides may not have settled their differences.
Khodorkovsky fell foul of the Kremlin by campaigning for lenient taxation of oil company profits and lobbying members of the State Duma lower house of parliament to vote against government plans to raise taxes.
Putin, re-elected this month, has said anyone found to have broken the law in chaotic 1990s privatizations, which turned a few businessmen into instant billionaires, would be pursued through the courts.
Boris Makarenko, deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies, said the article contained "clear symptoms of an attempt to reconcile with Putin, to extend his hand. It is an appeal to recognize the realities of Russia, of Putin's Russia."
Christopher Granville and Vladislav Oreshkin of United Financial Group were more circumspect. "All this will spark speculation of some behind-the-scenes deal between Khodorkovsky and the Kremlin," they wrote in a comment.
"More likely, Khodorkovsky is simply aiming to occupy the highest possible moral ground from which to pursue his career in public life and politics after he finally gets out of prison which is unlikely to be soon."
In his article, signed as a "private person and Russian citizen", Khodorkovsky said liberals had ignored social issues and were to blame for their poor public standing.
"We must recognize that 90 percent of the Russian people do not see privatization as fair and do not see the beneficiaries as legal property holders," he wrote.
"To justify privatization to the face of the nation...we must force big business to share with the people, probably by agreeing to the reform of taxation of mineral wealth and other steps probably not particularly pleasant for big owners."