Outpouring Tests Russian Leader

Medvedev's Response to Pardon Request Watched Closely

MOSCOW -- It began with Svetlana Bakhmina's handwritten letters from prison -- thoughtful, melancholy notes to an old middle school classmate.

"It wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for the children," Bakhmina, 39, a lawyer and mother of two, wrote a few years into her sentence. "I better not touch on that at all. I can talk about almost anything easily, except the children."

Bakhmina had been convicted of embezzling funds while working for the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a man who has been jailed and vilified by the Kremlin as a symbol of all that went wrong in Russia in the 1990s.

She wrote of the tedium of prison life, of how it felt to read Solzhenitsyn behind bars, of her despair at being separated from her husband and young sons. She described the joy of being reunited with her family during a furlough in the spring, and the heartbreak of returning to prison afterward. Weeks later, when she learned she was pregnant, she shared that unexpected news, too.

Her classmate Olga Bogdanova always wrote back, quietly offering her support. In late September, she also typed out a note on her blog, appealing to President Dmitry Medvedev to pardon her friend. She didn't expect a response, and she knew much of the public would be unsympathetic.

But days later, someone launched a Web site urging Medvedev to pardon Bakhmina. Then, tens of thousands of people endorsed the petition, including a host of prominent political and artistic figures. In a country where political activism is discouraged, the outpouring of support caused such a stir that even the Kremlin-controlled news media began reporting on the case.

Now, a month before Bakhmina's due date, her request for clemency has emerged as a test of the new Russian president's political character -- and perhaps of his clout.

By issuing a pardon, Medvedev could enhance the liberal image he has tried to foster since taking office in May. But doing so would almost certainly require the acquiescence of his predecessor and patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who remains the dominant figure in the Kremlin and oversaw the campaign against Khodorkovsky and his giant oil firm, Yukos.

Bakhmina was a mid-level legal executive in the company, and one of more than 20 Yukos executives jailed in the crackdown. Their supporters say they are victims of a Kremlin vendetta against Khodorkovsky, who was Russia's richest man at the time and had been funding opposition political parties.

Some argue that Bakhmina was arrested in December 2004 because more senior Yukos lawyers had fled the country.

After her conviction, Bakhmina asked to postpone her 6 1/2 -year prison term until her boys, then ages 5 and 9, were older. The courts refused and sent her to a remote prison in Mordovia, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow. Her children have been told she is away on business, and she has seen them once in nearly four years, during the 10-day furlough in March granted for good behavior, friends said.

Bakhmina has served more than half her sentence, making her eligible for parole, and the authorities have described her as a model prisoner. She has also admitted guilt and expressed remorse, her attorneys say. But judges have twice rejected her parole requests, most recently in September, when she was six months pregnant.