By Ben Mezrich
When Russia fell the assests of the state.wound up in the hands of 9 men. This book tells the story of how.that came about.
In the opening of the book we see Putin caling the oligarchs .together, to Stalin's old house, to warn them, "you can keep your millions, but stay out of my way. He was serving notice to these "Yeltsin Era Oligarchs", watch your ass! Many of these men would not heed the warning and would.not survive in the Putin Era.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
"The most influential and exposed oligarchs from the Yeltsin era include Boris Berezovsky,Alexander Smolensky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,Alex Konanykhin, Mikhail Fridman, Anatoly Chubais, Vladimir Gusinsky, Vitaly Malkin andVladimir Potanin.[5]
Potanin, Malkin and Fridman are the only ones of the list to have retained their influence in the Putin era (1999- ). The others "have been purged by the Kremlin", according to The Guardian."
9 The first "Oligarch" we meet is Boris Abromovich Berezovsky, oil king.
11 Growimg up as a, "less desirable ethnicity," with a gift for mathematics, the best life young Boris could have ever hoped for was,"a.simple quiet life of books and laboratories."
11 "And then--Perestroika...first Gorbachev...then Yeltsin...then an infant form of capitalism that was just now reaching it's chaotc teenage years.
14 As a math wiz, Young Boris undestood.the power of inflation and how it works in the favor.of the debtor. He utilized this principle to "arbitrage" his was to 60 million dollar bank account.
15 People in Russia just after fall took to calling it the "Wild East."
32 A brief look here at our second Oligarch, Vladimi Gusinsly, owner of Russia's NTV network and insider banker.
33 At first, the auctioning of Russiian resources was meant to be egalitarian, available to everone. A program setup by Anatoly Chubais, was to work like a Russian stock market with vouchers going.to the common man and everyone benefitting from the sale. What began as a "noble idea," quickly fell victim to the forces of the same "massive inflation" that propeled Berezovsky to the top. One by one Russia resouces ie,"timber, copper, automobiles, textiles," and finally media, "wound up in the hands of a small group of like-minded businessmen," the oligarchs.
This is hardly a new concept in this world. The same thing happened here in the US after our Revolution. The departing soldiers were payed in script called continentals (remember the phrase not worth a continental, yes it comes.from this). Later, the fledgling US government determined to pay full value to redeem these notes and the "insiders" with the means to pay for them went on a buying spree. The soldier got some (very little) money for what he assumed was worthless paper, and those on the inside, with the means to purchase, became fabulously wealthy. Capitalism and Communism are just two faces of Oligarchy.
