Russian Oligarch

Russian oligarchs ( Russian: олигархи, romanized: ''oligarkhi'') are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth in the 1990s via the Russian privatisation that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The failing Soviet state left the ownership of state assets contested, which allowed for informal deals with former USSR officials (mostly in Russia and Ukraine) as a means to acquire state property. Historian Edward L. Keenan has compared these oligarchs to the system of powerful boyars that emerged in late-medieval Muscovy.

The first modern Russian oligarchs emerged as business-sector entrepreneurs under Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary 1985–1991) during his period of market liberalization. The term " oligarch" derives from the Ancient Greek ''oligarkhia'' meaning "the rule of the few".

Since 2017, several Russian oligarchs and their companies have been hit by US sanctions under the table of Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for their support of "the Russian government's malign activity around the globe". In 2022, many Russian oligarchs were targeted and sanctioned by countries around the world as a rebuke of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Yeltsin era

During Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika (-1991), many businessmen in Russia imported goods such as personal computers and jeans into the country and sold them for a hefty profit.

During the 1990s, once Boris Yeltsin became President of Russia in July 1991, the oligarchs emerged as well-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and became rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt, but elected, government of Russia during the state's transition to a market-based economy. The so-called voucher privatization program of 1992–1994 enabled a handful of young men to become billionaires, specifically by arbitraging the vast difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities (such as natural gas and oil) and the prices prevailing on the world market. Because they stashed billions of dollars in private Swiss bank accounts rather than investing in the Russian economy, they were dubbed "kleptocrats". These oligarchs became extremely unpopular with the Russian public, and are commonly thought of as the cause of much of the turmoil that plagued the Russian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. '' The Guardian'' described the oligarchs as "about as popular with your average Russian as a man idly burning bundles of £50s outside an orphanage".

Emergence

Economists Sergei Guriev and Andrei Rachinsky contrast older oligarchs with nomenklatura ties and younger-generation entrepreneurs such as Kakha Bendukidze who built their wealth from scratch because Gorbachev's reforms affected a period "when co-existence of regulated and quasi-market prices created huge opportunities for arbitrage."

Although the majority of oligarchs were not formally connected with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, there are allegations that they were promoted (at least initially) by the communist apparatchiks, with strong connections to Soviet power-structures and access to the funds of the Communist Party.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky started his business importing computers under auspices of the Komsomol-authorised Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of the Youth in 1986, briefly serving as a deputy secretary of the Komsomol for a district in Moscow in 1987. His move into banking two years later was funded with support from Komsomol alumni working in Moscow city government. Later, he served in Russian government as an adviser to the prime minister and a deputy minister of fuel and power while still running his business.

Petr Aven worked alongside economist Yegor Gaidar in the (VNIISI), a Soviet Academy of Sciences think tank modelled after RAND. Gaidar later became the economics editor of the ''Kommunist'' journal, the official theoretical organ of the CC of the CPSU. He also held various positions up to the interim prime minister in the Russian government during 1991–1992.

A friend and a business partner of Boris Berezovsky, was a researcher at VNIISI as well. Berezovsky himself was Head of the Department of System Design at the another Academy of Sciences research centre, . His enterprise was established by the Institute as a joint venture.

Vladimir Vinogradov was the chief economist of Promstroibank, one of the six banks existing in the Soviet Union, previously serving as the secretary of Atommash plant Komsomol organisation.
Official Russian media usually depicted oligarchs as the enemies of "communist forces", which were portrayed as a stereotype that describes political power that wants to restore Soviet-style communism in Russia.

Post-Soviet business oligarchs include relatives or close associates of government officials, even government officials themselves, as well as criminal bosses often connected to the Russian government. Some members of these groups achieved vast wealth by acquiring state assets very cheaply (or for free) during the privatization process controlled by the Yeltsin government of 1991–1999. Specific accusations of corruption are often leveled at Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar, two of the "Young Reformers" chiefly responsible for Russian privatization in the early 1990s. According to David Satter, author of ''Darkness at Dawn'', "what drove the process was not the determination to create a system based on universal values but rather the will to introduce a system of private ownership, which, in the absence of law, opened the way for the criminal pursuit of money and power".

Involvement in politics

During Yeltsin's presidency (1991–1999) oligarchs became increasingly influential in Russian politics; they helped finance his re-election in 1996. Well-connected oligarchs like Abramovich, Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky and Potanin acquired key assets at a fraction of the value at the loans for shares scheme auctions conducted in the run-up to the election. Defenders of the out-of-favor oligarchs, often associated with Chubais's partythe Union of Right Forcesargue that the companies they acquired were not highly valued at the time because they still ran on Soviet principles, with non-existent stock control, huge payrolls, no financial reporting and scant regard for profit. They turned the businesses around and made them profitable for shareholders.

At the end of the century

The 1998 Russian financial crisis hit some of the oligarchs hard, however, and those whose holdings were still based mainly in banking lost much of their fortunes.

The most influential and well-known oligarchs from the Yeltsin era include:

* Boris Berezovsky
* Mikhail Fridman
* Vladimir Gusinsky
* Mikhail Khodorkovsky
* Vladimir Potanin
* Alexander Smolensky
* Pyotr Aven
* Vladimir Vinogradov
* Vitaly Malkin

They formed what became known as the (or "seven-banker outfit", ), a small group of businessmen with a great influence on Boris Yeltsin and his political environment. Together they controlled from 50% to 70% of all Russian finances between 1996 and 2000.

Fridman, Potanin, Aven and Malkin retained their wealth in the Putin era, which began in 1999. '' The Guardian'' reported in 2008 that oligarchs' from the era of former president Boris Yeltsin have been purged by the Kremlin".

Putin era

During Putin's first presidency term, a number of oligarchs came under fire for various illegal activities, particularly tax evasion in the businesses they acquired. However, it is widely speculated and believed that the charges were also politically motivated per these tycoons falling out of favor with the Kremlin. Vladimir Gusinsky of MediaMost and Boris Berezovsky both avoided legal proceedings by leaving Russia, and the most prominent, Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yukos oil, was arrested in October 2003 and sentenced to 9 years. This was subsequently extended to 14 years, and after Putin pardoned him, he was released on 20 December 2013.

An economic study distinguished 21 oligarchic groups as of 2003. Between 2000 and 2004, Putin apparently engaged in a power struggle with some oligarchs, reaching a "grand bargain" with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to maintain their powers, in exchange for their explicit support of – and alignment with – Putin's government. However, other analysts argue that the oligarchic structure has remained intact under Putin, with Putin devoting much of his time to mediating power-disputes between rival oligarchs. Some had been imprisoned, such as Mikhael Mirilashvili.

Many more have become oligarchs during Putin's time in power, and often due to personal relations with Putin, such as the director of the institute where Putin obtained a degree in 1996, Vladimir Litvinenko, and Putin's childhood friend and judo-teacher Arkady Rotenberg. Daniel Treisman proposed using a term "silovarch" ( silovik and oligarch) for new Russian oligarchs with backgrounds in Russian military and intelligence.

Prominent oligarchs of the Putin era include Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Prokhorov, Alisher Usmanov, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg, Leonid Mikhelson, Vagit Alekperov, Mikhail Fridman, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Vladimir Potanin, Pyotr Aven, and Vitaly Malkin.

In 2004, '' Forbes'' listed 36 billionaires of Russian citizenship, with a note: "this list includes businessmen of Russian citizenship who acquired the major share of their wealth privately, while not holding a governmental position". In 2005, the number of billionaires dropped to 30, mostly because of the Yukos case, with Khodorkovsky dropping from No. 1 (US$15.2 billion) to No. 21 (US$2.0 billion).

A 2013 report by Credit Suisse found that 35% of the wealth of Russia was owned by the wealthiest 110 individuals.

Billionaire, philanthropist, art patron and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev has criticized the oligarchs, saying "I think material wealth for them is a highly emotional and spiritual thing. They spend a lot of money on their own personal consumption." Lebedev has also described them as "a bunch of uncultured ignoramuses", saying "They don't read books. They don't have time. They don't go to rtexhibitions. They think the only way to impress anyone is to buy a yacht." He also notes that the oligarchs have no interest in social injustice.

On 30 January 2018, the US Treasury published a "list of oligarchs" per Pub.L. 115–44.

Oligarchs in London

A significant number of Russian oligarchs have bought homes in upmarket sections of London in the United Kingdom, which has been dubbed "Moscow on Thames" or "Londongrad". Some, such as Eugene Shvidler, Alexander Knaster

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