I just want to share here some few excerpts about this extraordinary book i finished recently: The Oligarchs by David E. Hoffman, which in general deals and relates with great details and in a narrative way how a small group of powerful young men came to power in the dying former Soviet Union and wanted to become the rulers of the nascent Russian Federation under a fierce capitalism. Specifically this deals with the story of media tycoons Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Guzinsky; former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov; economic guru and former advisor Analoty Chubais, mastermind of the massive waves of privatisations in the former USSR; former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the rather less known former banker Alexander Smolensky, all of them with one common goal: turn former decrepit socialism in the former Soviet Union into a fierce capitals system of free market.
Aside from the separate biographical selection for each one of these oligarchs made by the author, who undoubtedly possess precious information about all this process carried out in Russia, what the reader will take and sense after reading the whole piece is how a definitely critical socio economic process like the privatisation of soviet assets was carried away by this small group, which felt in some ways empowered by the historical circumstances to change radically the destiny of the country, but which in the end, after incurring in many criminal activities since they performed non legal economic activities, political dynamics in the new Russia will be the one to end up this story for these so called oligarchs, with the eruption in the russian political scene by the now president Vladimir Putin.
Definitelty, this is a good book to read, one with a strong historical perspective, for the ones studying and analysing Russia, a book that deals with which was definitely the most sensitive situation in the history of the country in my personal view, since the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution and the communism in the red country. Thumbs up for this piece.
