Rogues, rascals and oligarchs

ONCE UPON A TIME IN RUSSIA
The Rise of The Oligarchs
Ben Mezrich
Random House
280 pages; Rs 699

"Rogues, rascals and freebooters," Winston Churchill's trenchant (and probably apocryphal) characterisation of India's freedom fighters aptly describes the individuals who grabbed power when the Soviet Union came apart. Those people became very rich, very quickly by pulling off a massive heist of public resources.

This book tracks the transfer of wealth and power in Russia. The focal point is the career of the so-called Godfather of the Kremlin, the oligarch Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (1946-2013). When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell apart in December 1991, there was a vast power vacuum. The successor states were rich in natural resources. None possessed systems of democratic governance.

The men who seized power in Russia (and the other republics) were mostly former apparatchiks. They had no idea how to run businesses and sought trusted associates to do that. Those oligarchs soon became kingmakers.

The oligarchs came from sundry and diverse backgrounds. The one thing they had in common was that they were all good at the game of krysha. The word literally means "roof" and it is used as shorthand in Russian for "patronage and protection".

Berezovsky was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He had a PhD in mathematics and over 20 published papers and textbooks to his name. His krysha was partly based on his cordial relationship with Boris Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva, a serious mathematician herself.

His first fortune came from selling Ladas. His dealership sold cars for cash and deployed the float in lucrative enterprises, delaying repayments to the car factory until inflation had devalued the payments.

Berezovsky then benefited from the "innovative" privatisation scheme of loans for shares. State enterprises were told to borrow money and offer shares as collateral. Deliberate defaults then enabled creditors to become owners.

Such deals made Berzovsky, his close friend Arkady "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, and his young protege, a certain Roman Abramovich, unimaginably rich. Berezovsky helped Mr Abramovich acquire control of the oil and gas company Sibneft. Mr Abramovich paid $17 million upfront to take over a loan of $110 million. This translated into ownership of a stake, valued a year or two later at $8 billion-plus. "Badri" and Berezovich took a similar stake. They also helped Mr Abramovich take over Russia's aluminium industry. In return, Mr Abramovich bankrolled their flamboyant life styles.

Berezovsky also developed inordinate influence over public opinion due to his control of Russia's state TV corporation, ORT, and he installed a friend in charge of Aeroflot. In 1994, he put together a coalition of oligarchs, who campaigned successfully on behalf of Yeltsin. Also in 1994, he survived an assassination attempt, via car bomb. Vladislav Listyev, the CEO of ORT, was less fortunate, being shot in his own apartment. The investigating officer in that unsolved case, Alexander Litvinenko of the Federal Security Service (FSB), became a close friend of Berezosky.

By the late 1990s, Berezovsky and Co. needed a successor to the ailing Yeltsin. They chose the dynamic young FSB director, Vladimir Putin. "Volodya" was friendly with Berezovsky at the time and Berezovsky was instrumental in making Mr Putin, first, the Prime Minister and, then, acting President.

Misjudging Mr Putin led to Berezovsky's downfall. After taking over, Mr Putin told the oligarchs confine their activities to business, or else. The first frictions arose after ORT's "unfavourable" coverage of the Kursk submarine tragedy. It escalated, with Berezovsky's friends also targeted.

Litvinenko underwent a cycle of arrest, release and immediate re-arrest until he fled Russia. "Badri" returned to his native Georgia, made an unsuccessful run at the presidency and then settled in the UK. Berezovsky was also forced into exile. Russian courts sentenced him to several terms of imprisonment in absentia. Mr Abramovich bought out his assets for $1.3 billion and Berezovsky sued him in London, alleging it was a coerced sale at a deep discount. The case was thrown out, after startling accusations by both sides.

By then, Litvinenko had been poisoned exotically, via a radioactive element, Polonium 210. As he lay dying, Litvinenko wrote an open letter accusing Mr Putin of his murder. "Badri" also died, of what the British coroner termed a "suspicious" but possibly natural heart-attack.

In March 2013, Berezovsky's body was found hanging in the bathroom of his Ascot estate. It may have been suicide. He was a broken man, facing insolvency. The coroner's verdict was "open". Just before he died, Berezovsky had written to Mr Putin, begging for clemency.

It is an incredible story - a fable featuring many shades of gray and plenty of outright evil without much in the way of good. The narrative pace is frenetic. The research is impressive. I found two point-of-view death scenes, of the last moments of Listyev, and of Lieutenant Captain Dmitry Kolesniekov in the Kursk, in mildly bad taste. However, the recreation/re-imagination of events where the writer is not present is a common conceit in faction.

Perhaps it is taken too far when the author guesses at the thought processes of the opaque, mercurial Berezovsky, or the enigmatic Mr Putin. The reader encounters fascinating characters. But the literary persona may not bear much resemblance to the real man. Keep that caveat in mind.