Berezovsky was the architect of post-Soviet Russia not once but twice. His first invention was the devilish Yeltsin-era equation where the rich carved out great chunks of state property, then turned their money into power over and over again. They called these men oligarchs, though in truth only one of the seven original oligarchs—Berezovsky himself—was ever politically powerful enough to deserve the title. Yeltsin may have made Russia free, but it was Berezovsky who made it for sale. And not just oil companies and TV stations but every Russian institution, including the press, Parliament, and police, were also bought up by rival oligarchs who used their tame ministers, editors, and cops to take down their enemies.
But it’s Berezovsky’s second legacy that we live with today: Vladimir Putin.
Putin was Berezovsky’s creation. That sounds somehow controversial now, but none of the key players would seriously deny that Berezovsky was the prime mover in the search for a successor to the ailing Yeltsin—a successor who would be popular with the Russian people yet preserve the wealth and privileges of the Family who selected him. In Putin, once the faithful sidekick and enforcer for the liberal St. Petersburg mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, Berezovsky thought he’d found a safe pair of hands. He was, of course wrong: within three years of coming to power Putin had put one leading oligarch in jail (Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who remains in a Siberian prison camp to this day), and two more, including Berezovsky, had fled for their lives.
Bookmarks