Politics 1A Essay

[See further Understanding Russian Politics, ch 5] A more diversified society. Under Soviet system, two ‘classes’ and a ‘stratum’. Differences limited by law. No living off the labour of others, or ‘exploitation’, or the class conflict of capitalism Little private wealth, limited differences in incomes (tho much distributed by administrative means or privilege) Brezhnev and hunting; heat-seeking missiles. With democratisation, these advantages became vulnerable; elite naturally concerned to make its position secure, heritable. (As predicted by Trotsky.) Hence (arguably) privatisation. Substantial evidence, not just in Russia, that the first ‘capitalists’ were junior members of the incumbent elite, often Komsomol (Khodorkovsky for instance).
The ‘conversion of privilege into property’. At any rate, with the end of ‘equality in poverty’ a steady widening in measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient (see book). Or decile ratio: from 4.4 in 1990 to 13.9 at the end of the decade; by 2008 16.9. Very high by international standards. At the bottom, those ‘below subsistence’: nearly a third, some 44mn in 2000, but down to 13pc in 2008 At the top, some spectacular wealth even by international standards. The richest and most powerful known as the ‘oligarchs’: usually a combination of raw materials, banking, some of the press. Provided the ‘new Russians’ of the 1990s. Jokes about them: A new Russian’s favourite book? ‘His chequebook’ ‘One New Russian brags to another, “I must be some kind of genius.”
“What makes you say that?
“I bought my boy this Lego set and put the whole thing together in just three days.”
“So?”
“Well, it says right here on the box: ‘From 3 to 5 years’” (Adams p160).

From mid-1990s ‘shares for loans’ deal, following the baling out of Yeltsin in 1996. Forbes list annually suggested in 2012 that Russia had the world’s second-largest number of billionaires, 96, just ahead of China (95) to behind USA. Recovered after crash of 2008-9. In 2011, more billionaires in Moscow than any other city. In 2012, richest Alisher Usmanov (interests in steel and communications; big shareholder in Arsenal football club). No 28 in the world rankings. No 2 in Russia in 2012 was Vladimir Lisin, CM of Novolipetsk Steel For some time Mikhail Prokhorov (presidential candidate); in 2012 Russia’s No 7, world’s No 58. And Courchevel early 2007 [see URP pp180-1] (private airfield for executive jets, near to Swiss border for bank accounts) – ‘Courchevelsky’ Introduction of ‘quotas’, ‘tours without Russians’ Also Oleg Deripaska (in 2011, 36)
Aluminium tsar; richest of all in 2008; yacht in Corfu; had married daughter of Yeltsin’s chief of staff; banned from US. Also Roman Abramovich (in 2012, No 9 in Russia and No 68 in the world) [the following is from URP p175:]
An uncontested divorce from his second wife in 2007 was the occasion to enumerate his various assets: two Boeing airliners, two helicopters, a six-storey house in fashionable Knightsbridge, a country estate in West Sussex, a twelve-room penthouse in Kensington built with the marble that had been used for the Taj Mahal, a castle near Cap d’Antibes, a Georgian house in Belgravia, a house in San Tropez, a hotel in Cannes and a dacha in the Moscow region – on top of bank deposits ($15bn), his football club, company shares and three yachts, one of them with a missile defence system and its own submarine. His wife was believed to have agreed to a relatively modest $300 million divorce settlement, plus $100,000 a month for the costs of his five children. The settlement, at all events, hardly cramped his style. In May 2008 he splashed out more than £60 million for two canvases by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon; German shipbuilders were meanwhile putting the final touches to the 12,000 tonne ‘Eclipse’, a yacht about two-thirds the size of the Titanic and the largest and

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