At 5:00 PM -0700 7/11/98, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>On Sat, 11 Jul 1998, Georgi M. Derluguian wrote:
>
>> Regarding Academician Berezovsky, he is
>> intelligent and ambitious enough not to go to Switzerland other than for
>> the vanity vacations. And he underwrote Lebed's campaign in Krasnoyarsk not
>> just to subvert it.
>
>Really? Boris B., the multimillionaire, is now an academician and even
>funding opposition movements? Capital civilizes after all! Now if only
>Soros could underwrite Hungary's export financing for a couple of years...
>wait a minute, he *has* been underwriting the place for a couple of years.
>It's the return of the Red Bourgeoisie!
>
>-- Dennis
Dennis,
Don't be too cynical about our nouveaux Russians. Berezovsky is a smart
Jewish boy (a devote Orthodox Christian, however, as he likes to stress
when meeting with the neo-Cossack buddies or baptizing his newest child
before the TV cameras). in the Soviet times he was prevented from the
mainstream channels of moibility by his ethnicity inscribed in the famous
"fifth line" of the internal passport. Well, his second best choice was to
become a well-paid applied mathematician specializing in the field that in
the late seventies was simply unclaimed by the Communist party careerists
-- computers, too difficult. In the last years of Brezhnev period, when the
career mobility practically stalled, computers were a marginal but still
working channel to advance in the academic and administrative fields. (I
can name at least a dozen rather famous political and business
personalities who were heads of "computer literacy circles" twenty years
ago, starting with the former Secretary of State and now fugitive Sergei
Stankevich, my former "young scholars' council" leader.) Now, Berezovsky
achieved the top of what was possible back then -- in 1982-89 he
computerized the huge automobile factory AvtoVAZ in the town of Togliatti.
That was a mighty career booster to Berezovsky and his graduate students
and an opportunity to make many valuable contacts. He was elected
Corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1990, a little
BEFORE he made the first million.
The rest of the success story is very typical -- being smart and close to
the top, but unburdened by the old "habitus" of Red Directors, Berezovsky
immediately identified new possibilities for private accumulation. I never
ask people for details, and we really don't need them so far as I am a
sociologist, not a prosecutor. Apparently, Berezovsky offered to
Kadannikov, a Soviet counterpart of Lee Iacaccoca, a scheme of avoiding
domestic taxes by falsely exporting the Soviet-made Ladas (a native name
for FIAT) to Italy. Kadannikov gave okay, but soon realized that he was
getting, let say, 10 per cent, and that bloody jewish kid -- 90% of the
profit! Without blaming anyone (you can read Forbes, December 1996, if you
want jucier details -- Berezovsky sued for libel), let's say someone tried
to blow up Berezovsky, but the killer pushed the button of the
remote-controlled car bomb half a second too early -- Berezovsky's
bodyguard in the front seat was killed as their Mercedes was leaving the
gate, but Boris Abramovich survived with only a concussion. He fought back
fiercely, with several very prominent gangsters dying rather efficiently
and on time. Berezovsky also prepared fire escapes -- Israeli citizenship
and the US green card (he later gave them up to become national security
advisor of Russia). He knew that the ultimate persoanl safety device was a
state position and political clout. For this reason he began frequenting
Davos and paying for the visits by Russian officials; he bailed out
financially distressed newspapers and bought the controlling package in the
Russian first TV channel (the ironically called Public Television of
Russia, ORT). He has lots of well-wishers who leak various details into the
press, like Berezovsky's secret investment in Lebed's campaign in
Krasnoyarsk, a huge Siberian province and a good springboard to presidency.
Last but not least, Berezovsky is personally corageous (with the gambler's
courage), and is married to a stunnigly beautiful wife.
I wish we had a Balzac to describe this, not all those damn post-modernists!
Yours,
Georgi
-- Jorge Rodríguez Ph.D Candidate Northwestern University j-rodriguez2@nwu.edu