When you were 14 years old, could you write a history research paper 50 pages long? That’s what they did. When you graduated from high school, did you ever work in the Federal Security archive to find out what happened to your executed grandparents? That’s what they did too.

In Moscow’s Obraztsov Theatre, for the seventh year in succession, prize-winners in Memorial’s all-Russian essay contest for senior high-school students - this year entitled ‘The individual in 20th-century Russian history’ - were announced. In the brochure for the contest, the Open Russia charity was cited as among the main sponsors, but this, almost certainly, is for the last time. For Open Russia was funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the courts have frozen its accounts. Why they should have chosen to undermine Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s educational and social projects is not known,but perhaps the whole matter will in time be sorted out - although best, perhaps, by lawyers. When Khodorkovsky’s public career is rehabilitated by the historians of the future, it will perhaps be a little late for today’s contestants - but it will be great nonetheless.