"Putin has bought into the notion that Russian power will derive from higher G.D.P., and that's totally new for that part of the world," Mr. Kotkin added. "He's given a wide berth to both the economic planners and the market reformers. He's also given a wide berth to the state security apparatus."
Government intelligence and security forces are so free to operate in Mr. Putin's Russia that the country's courts, some political analysts say, act as instruments of Kremlin policy rather than as counterbalances to state power.
"Some people try to make Khodorkovsky the next Andrei Sakharov and he's not the next Andrei Sakharov - he did sinister things," said Michael McFaul, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University. "But you don't need to make him the next Sakharov to argue that there is a problem when the state self-selects whom to prosecute."
Mr. Kotkin likens current Kremlin politics to a rugby scrum, with market reformers, hard-line security advisers and members of Mr. Putin's inner circle all wrestling for the upper hand in policy making. Mr. Kotkin suggests that if market reforms gain greater traction in Russia, then the rule of law, over time, will supersede the security apparatus - though he cautions that this is unlikely "in Putin's lifetime."
Dire predictions about financial fallout from Mr. Khodorkovsky's imprisonment last fall have not proved true so far. Foreign investors have not fled Russia in droves, as Mr. Khodorkovsky's Western advocates initially envisaged, and the country's economy is robust and thriving. The government is running a budget surplus, runaway inflation has been tamed, and the gross domestic product has risen at a brisk pace. From 1998, when the economy unraveled amid a financial collapse, to the end of 2003, Russian G.D.P. rose 38 percent, according to the World Bank - a stellar performance by any standard.
A recent J. P. Morgan Chase research report praised Mr. Putin's oil policies as "well conceived," saying that the industry will be taxed "more in line with international norms" while still receiving government support for expansion projects. The report notes that the Kremlin plans to use added tax revenue from the oil industry to lower other business taxes and to finance health, education and welfare programs in Russia, where one in five people are mired in poverty.
Russia's stock market has been flagging of late amid fears of rising interest rates in the United States. And Russia's banking system remains dangerously weak and racked by corruption. But financial analysts say that neither problem seems to presage broader upheavals in the economy.
Nor have Russia's oligarchs disappeared, despite a belief among some political and financial analysts that Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest foreshadowed a widespread purge of the country's industrial titans. A World Bank report published in April said that 23 Russian industrial concerns - all of them controlled by oligarchs - still accounted for about 36 percent of the country's privately generated revenue and 38 percent of total private employment. The roster includes Oleg V. Deripaska, an aluminum magnate, and Viktor Vekselberg, an oil and metals tycoon.
True, some oligarchs have taken to the road. Roman A. Abramovich, who controls the oil giant Sibneft and once pursued a merger with Yukos, has been busy spreading his $12.5 billion fortune around Western Europe. He has relocated to Britain, bought one of England's premier soccer teams, scooped up a Swiss castle and two yachts worth more than $115 million each, and has given every appearance of wanting to convert a big chunk of his cash into hard assets before the Kremlin lays its hands on it.
Like specters from the privatization follies and machinations of yore, other Russian businessmen have rushed into the gap created when Mr. Khodorkovsky was arrested.
In May, Boris A. Berezovsky, once the dean of the oligarchs but now in self-imposed exile in London, slapped "Free Khodorkovsky" placards atop a fleet of Mercedes-Benz limousines that snaked like a rich man's conga line through the streets of the British capital
And Boris Jordan, an American-born financier who created some of the earliest and most widely disputed Russian privatization plans, this month offered his own solution to Yukos's woes: he would secure a seat on the company's board and lead negotiations with the government. Mr. Jordan's maneuver was pooh-poohed by analysts who observed that a Kremlin insider, Viktor V. Gerashchenko, had the Yukos board firmly in rein as its new chairman.
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"It's not viable and Gerashchenko would never let that happen," said Padma Desai, an economics professor at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, who met recently with Russian government officials and businessmen in Moscow. "I think about 25 percent of the company may go into government ownership and the government clearly doesn't want to destroy Yukos."
YUKOS officials say the company's financial performance, buoyed by skyrocketing oil prices, has not waned since Mr. Khodorkovsky was arrested. Last month, Yukos reported that its oil output rose 9.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with the corresponding period of 2003.
"I don't think there has been any material impact on the bottom line," Bruce Misamore, Yukos's chief financial officer, said of Mr. Khodorkovsky's absence. He added that Mr. Khodorkovsky's managerial talents were missed, but that Yukos had a "very strong remaining management team."
In January, Yukos reported net income of about $3.5 billion for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2003, an increase of 71 percent from the period a year earlier. Since January, Yukos has not publicly posted earnings that conform with American accounting standards, prompting analysts in Moscow to question exactly how the company is deploying its ample resources - especially in light of its contention that its inability to make the $3.4 billion tax payment will force it into bankruptcy.
Yukos made dividend payments of about $2 billion to its investors last year, cash that went to major shareholders like Mr. Khodorkovsky. Yukos also recently paid a bank consortium an undisclosed portion of a $2.6 billion loan, about $1.6 billion of which was guaranteed by Group Menatep, an investment vehicle controlled by Mr. Khodorkovsky and other financiers.
Group Menatep owns about 44 percent of Yukos's shares, and the loan repayment, which tapped into cash that otherwise might have gone toward the disputed tax payments, benefited Mr. Khodorkovsky and other Yukos insiders.
"In the event that cash flows could not be properly accounted for, questions could arise as to whether or not Menatep was seeking to strip as much cash as possible from Yukos, an asset which it justifiably believes itself to be in immediate danger of losing," Eric Kraus, a financial analyst at Sovlink Securities, said in a June research report. "If so, the complex web of trading companies which still reportedly handles Yukos's oil sales would provide an ideal vehicle for diversion of cash flows."
MR. MISAMORE disputed that any cash was being drained from Yukos, describing it as "absolutely false" speculation. Although he declined to provide details of the loan repayments to Group Menatep, he said Yukos had about $1 billion in cash reserves. He said Yukos could meet the tax payment if the government allowed it to sell some assets. But if Mr. Putin stays true to his word that he does not wish to see Yukos bankrupt, then the Russian government may wind up with a large stake in Yukos.
James Fenkner, research director at Troika Dialog, a brokerage firm in Moscow, said that the Russian government controls only about 5 percent of the country's oil concerns. By comparison, he said, oil assets in OPEC countries are completely state-owned, as are oil interests in Mexico.
Such a small government presence in the oil industry makes Russia the exception among emerging-market economies, he said.
"This all goes back to Anatoly Chubais and the need to privatize everything immediately," Mr. Fenkner said. "There was an incredible concentration of wealth in a very short period of time in a society that regards itself as egalitarian. The quick-and-dirty method of privatization has had its negative ramifications."
For Mr. Khodorkovsky, who raked in riches faster than anyone else, that has meant trading his executive suite for a cage in court.
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