In 2000, just when Putin succeeded in his election for Russian presidential election and when Russia bowed down to him, someone said shamelessly: "Valoja is nothing great. As long as I want, I can make a monkey president."

What is " oligopoly "?

Berezovsky, one of the seven major oligarchs in Russia, made his fortune in the late 1980s, and once controlled the automobile trade in Russia. Later, he went into exile to the UK and died in a foreign land

In fact, he was not the only one in Russia at that time, but there were seven most powerful oligarchs. They were collectively called "Seven Major Oligarchs in Russia" . Many people believe that their power has long exceeded Kremlin and they are the real rulers of Russia. There is a saying among the Russian people: "Russia may be defeated by the United States, but only the oligarchs can destroy Russia" .

In 1994, three Georgian elderly people stood next to the pushed Zhukov statue

What is an oligarch?

They are Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, an extremely special minority group in Russia . They account for less than 1% of the total population, but they have mastered about 50% of the social wealth, controlled 80% of the market and commodities, accounted for about 70% of the stock market market value, and had a huge influence in politics, economy and culture.

The cruise ship of the Russian oligarch Abramovich, seized by the United States, is worth up to 52 billion pounds

The wealth in the hands of these people is richer than the Russian treasury, and is even close to the GDP of many small and medium-sized countries. These wealthy Russian oligarchs drive their own luxury cruises to buy luxury goods and land all over the world. They are called by the American media "the most arrogant rich man in the world" . Russian oligarchs are not just tycoons who are "stupid and have a lot of money". They are powerful and sometimes even say something can change Russia's destiny.

The administrative division of the Russian Federation is very complex. It is basically composed of 89 federal entities, with an area of about 17.09 million square kilometers and a population of about 140 million

Oligarchy, which once shrouded 17.09 million square kilometers of Russia's land, making 140 million Russians breathless.

For a long time during the collapse of the Soviet Union, these Russian oligarchs were the actual rulers of Russia.

As a very influential group, Russian oligarchs and Korean chaebols, Japanese consortiums and British and American Jewish financial groups are known as the "four major chaebols in the world" . These people monopolize a large amount of social resources and wealth, which not only promotes the development of the country's economy, but also causes huge differences between the rich and the poor.

Lee Boo-jin was born in 1970. The eldest daughter of Lee Kun-hee, the president of Samsung Group, South Korea's richest man, is called "Samsung Princess"

For ordinary Russian people, they want to crush the oligarchs.

Russia St. Petersburg Street View

The original meaning of the oligarch is "one of the few people". When extended, it means "monopoly", including political oligarch , such as the aristocratic families of Japanese politics (such as Abe family ); there is also economic oligarch , similar to Korean chaebols (such as Samsung Group).

Most oligarchs in developed Western countries are concentrated in one area, while Russian oligarchs play an important role in both political and economic fields. The most puzzling thing is that the formation process of both Japan and South Korea and Europe and the United States is extremely long, and it can be said to be a century of generations. However, all Russian oligarchs emerged after the 1990s, like "children who grew up overnight" .

One of the seven major oligarchs in Russia Khodorkovsky and his daughter

The emergence of the Russian oligarch has a close historical connection with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and is also inseparable from a person, that is, the first Russian president, the "drunk" Yeltsin.

In 1995, then Russian President Yeltsin met with then US President Clinton. Clinton was amused by Yeltsin's jokes and burst into tears

Who raised the Russian oligarch?

When people mention Russia, the first reaction may be that besides 's vast territory, cold climate, vodka , Russian beauties, and caviar , there may be only oligarch . This has made many Russians dissatisfied because the oligarchs have made the Russian people miserable.

Russians belong to the East Slavs branch among the Slavs. They are one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe. They have seven oligarchs in the Yeltsin era. They are Berezovsky, Gusinsky , Vinogradov, Smolensky, Friedman, Khodorkovsky, and Malkin . The net worth of these seven people once reached 80% of Russia's annual tax revenue, which is equivalent to the whole of Russia working for them seven jobs.

In 2019, the parade of the 74th anniversary of the victory of the Russian Patriotic War, and the female soldiers who participated in the inspection were parade. Due to historical wars, Russia's male-female ratio is relatively unbalanced

Although Putin took office, he eliminated the seven major oligarchs in the Yeltsin era, countless new oligarchs emerged immediately. To this day, Russia is unable to eradicate the oligarchy and get rid of the influence of oligarchy politics and oligarchy economy.

Schematic diagram of the Soviet Union and its franchises. The Soviet Union is the largest country in the modern world and another superpower in the world, with an area of about 22.4 million square kilometers and there is a result. In fact, the formation of Russian oligarchs laid the root of disaster as early as the Soviet era.

The Soviet Union was the world's first socialist country, , and developed the Stalin model with a high concentration of . The characteristic of the Stalin model is concentration, that is, monopoly, with the central government dominating national resources, and all economic activities must be carried out under the management of the state.

972, the assembly workshop of the Soviet Lada Automobile Factory

Under the planned economic planning of the Stalin model, the resources, wealth and manpower of the Soviet Union were concentrated, creating many large factories and groups. At that time, the Soviet Union was filled with state-owned factories of billions of scale.

During the Soviet Union, female workers and male workers enjoyed the same rights. Equal pay for equal work

The mid-1970s was the peak of the Soviet Union's national strength, and GDP was once close to 80% of the United States. You should know that even today's China is close to 75% of the United States. The Soviet Union was at its peak at that time. At that time, the Soviet Union produced 14% of the world's automobiles, 23% of home appliances, and 50% of heavy arms. The steel output was as high as 148,000 tons and the oil output was as high as 603,000 tons, both 1.4 times that of the United States.

In 1980, the Soviet Union successfully held the Moscow Olympics, costing an unprecedented $9 billion, winning the "most expensive" Olympics in history, which is a proof of the Soviet Union's national strength.

In 1980, the Moscow Olympics spent more than 9 billion US dollars, which was the highest-invested Olympics at that time. However, it was also one of the fewest Olympics participating in the country. The United States' economic miracle relied on the hegemony of the US dollar and two world wars , making money by exploiting the whole world; and The Soviet economy relied on the Stalin model , which was the highly concentrated economic system of that paved the way for the emergence of oligarchs in the future.

In 1984, a Soviet factory supervisor visited the factory to inspect the work. The Soviet Union's criticized "bureaucracy" was very serious. Since the mid-70s, the Soviet Union's economy has begun to fall into weakness, and major Soviet state-owned enterprises under the influence of bureaucracy and rigid system are in a miserable way. The Soviet factories could clearly build anything, but they had to follow the arrangements of the superiors. The quantity, category, and price had to be based on the header's instructions. Various documents were often wrong, and even jokes about electrical appliance factories building rifles.

981, on the streets of Leningrad, the Soviet Union was singing

. In the Soviet Union, under the prevalence of bureaucracy, the economic sector ignored the market demand and the quality requirements of the goods. What the people needed were food, clothing and home appliances, but 60% of factories in the Soviet Union were always making machinery and military products.

In 1972, US President Nixon visited the Soviet Union and met with the supreme leader of the Soviet Union Brezhnev, trying to ease the US-Soviet relations

There is a clip in the Russian movie "The Kill of Munich" where the Soviets in 1972 even had to smuggle back from West Germany.

019 Russian movie "The Kill of Munich" tells the story of the Soviet basketball team defeating the American basketball team in 3 seconds at the 1972 Munich Olympics

Although the top documents do not allow daily necessities to be made, the demand among the people has always been very strong. Many factory managers have had bad ideas and quietly bypass the instructions of superiors, and even forge superior documents and false reports to obtain a large number of materials other than the instructions to create market scarce goods. At the same time, a large number of Soviet people also smuggled goods from the West, and the huge Soviet black market in flourished in the mid-1970s.

The Soviet black market is the "park" for Russian oligarchs to accumulate original capital.

Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, came to power in 1985. During his term, the Soviet Union unstoppable disintegration entered the mid-1980s. The economic situation of the Soviet Union was even more worrying, bureaucratic corruption became a trend, and the black market basically began to circulate goods on the surface. Many Soviet bureaucrats themselves participated in the production of private goods, giving the green light. The government's authority has declined, the state's asset loss has been severe, and the country's material allocation has been chaotic. Many remote cities have experienced low and out of stocks, while private capital has filled the gap.

In 1987, Gorbachev met with then-US President Reagan

Gorbachev's reform of the Soviet Union failed, and the Soviet Union was in turmoil overnight. Not to mention factory documents, even the central government's orders were all empty texts. At that time, the senior Soviet army stationed in East Germany even blatantly used its position to smuggle a large number of Western home appliances, cars, food and clothing from West Germany, which almost became popular.

These illegally smuggled goods do not require taxes. Many speculators and bureaucrats became rich overnight, and rely on their connections and power to buy and sell everywhere. Many of them were later Russian oligarchs. For example, the Berezovsky mentioned above, this guy was a university mathematics professor before he became famous, but later he turned into Russia's largest "auto smuggler".

He helped Yeltsin to the throne of president and was called "the real master of the Kremlin" .

997, Yeltsin and Berezovsky, who was Yeltsin's largest "economic supporter"

986, the Soviet Union promulgated the " Cooperative Law ", the so-called cooperatives are private enterprises. Gorbachev also abolished economic controls in 1988, allowing private enterprises to produce goods and open the market to foreign capital, and a large number of Western capital and individual enterprises emerged like mushrooms after a rain. Many oligarchs have become billionaires on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1990, the first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opened in Moscow, and citizens lined up in a long queue. These Russian oligarchs had an indescribable and unknown relationship with Western capital. Before becoming rich, they were generally bureaucrats, professors or financiers. In the late 1980s, there were many oligarchs with a net worth of up to $1 billion in the Soviet Union. The first private bank in the Soviet Union also opened in 1989, and these people directly took state-owned enterprises for their own use.

990, citizens of Moscow, the Soviet Union were preparing to exchange their rubles for gold or US dollars in front of the bank,

990, citizens of Moscow flocked to private banks opened by oligarchs to exchange dollars and gold. The Russian oligarchs had already begun to take shape on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Smolensky, one of the seven major oligarchs, founded the Russian Capital Savings Bank in the late 1980s. It once became Russia's largest private bank

0 The Soviet Union collapsed, and the oligarchs fed

In 1991, the overwhelmed Soviet Union finally moved towards the disintegration, and the Cold War ended. The collapse of the Soviet Union was called "the world's largest geopolitical disaster in the 20th century", but for the Russian oligarchs, it was a great thing. But the happiest person may not be an oligarch, but Russia's first president Yeltsin .

Yetin during the Soviet Union was originally at a high position, but in the late 1980s, he began to sing a counter-topic with Gorbachev, promoting "Russia's separation from the Soviet Union", and was hidden. After the August 19th Incident in 1991, his political prestige rose to its peak, making him one of the biggest promoters of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In August 1991, Yeltsin delivered a speech in Moscow, thwarting the August 19th Incident

Yeltsin came to power. In addition to the support of Western forces, the most important force was these oligarchs. Russian oligarchs sent Yeltsin a steady stream of financial support, and Yeltsin also reciprocates. After taking office, they opened the door to convenience and provided political asylum to these oligarchs. Under the collusion between officials and businessmen, the Russian oligarchs began to seize national wealth without restraint.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, former leader Gorbachev even needed to attend the party to make a living

In 1992, in order to directly "run into capitalist ", Yeltsin promoted a complete free market economy, which was the so-called "shock therapy", and issued 148 million government bonds, which almost caused Russia to be shocked. Overnight, Russia fell into economic collapse, bureaucratic corruption and social chaos.

rubles plummeted, and countless Russians' lifelong savings were gone in an instant.

In 1992, Moscow citizens robbed daily necessities

The misfortune of the country became the "lucky" of the oligarchs. Through Yeltsin, the oligarchs took out a large amount of rubles from the National Bank of , which they controlled , and exchanged them into US dollars. Their wealth soared overnight, but caused the ruble to plummet. On one hand, there are ordinary people who are hungry, but on the other hand, there are oligarchs who make big profits.

Russian ruble check issued by Yeltsin government

The army sold weapons, citizens sold furniture, and state sold enterprises. A large number of high-quality enterprises in the Soviet era were sold to a few oligarchs at a bargain price. By 1999, 70% of Russia's large enterprises and assets of up to 200 billion US dollars were controlled by oligarchs, of which seven of the most powerful oligarchs were called the "Seven Oligarchs" .

In the 2005 American movie "King of War", after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western arms dealers came to resell weapons. The Soviet army even offered the conditions for "buy six and get one for tanks"

oligarchs made money by themselves, and took advantage of the national crisis to acquire enterprises in large quantities, and soon monopolized the industries such as oil, natural gas, automobiles, metallurgy, media and food . These industries are all based on the lifeline of the country, but have become the personal wealth of the oligarchs.

In 1992, Russian soldiers on the streets of St. Petersburg suffered from hunger and coldness, from state-owned companies to AK rifles, and in addition to nuclear warheads, Russian oligarchs sold everything, just about to sell the Kremlin at a clear price.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought great pain to the Russian people, but made the oligarchs make a fortune. In this way, the oligarchs contributed money and Yeltsin contributed their efforts, and a nearly perfect power-money transaction chain was formed since then. These economic giants and Yeltsin use each other and frequently enter and exit the Kremlin. They can really "walking sideways" and influence Russian politics. So much so that Yeltsin is called "Russian President on Paper" by the American media. The implication is self-evident.

997, Yeltsin convened the seven major Russian oligarchs to meet in the Kremlin

993, with the full support of the oligarchs, Yeltsin was able to bombard White House and take over the power.

993, Yeltsin authorized the Russian army to attack and forcibly dissolve the highest Soviet of the Russian Federation

However, Yeltsin still did not expect that in 1995, Yeltsin defeated Yeltsin, and the Russian army suffered heavy losses. He suffered heavy losses in the small Chechen Chechen , and was finally forced to withdraw his troops, losing 100 billion rubles and more than 5,000 soldiers. The failure of the Chechen War and the messy economic reforms have caused Yeltsin's approval rating to a new low.

995 Grozny, a young Russian soldier burned the money from the Soviet era to keep warm

996, the Russian presidential election was about to be imminent, and Yeltsin's poll support rate was about to be surpassed by Russian Communist Party Jiuganov. The Russian people were extremely disappointed with Yeltsin's poor governance ability. Yeltsin became anxious and secretly summoned the seven oligarchs to discuss countermeasures.

finally reached an agreement, and the oligarch paid to help Yeltsin run for election, on the condition that Yeltsin would obey their will from then on, so Yeltsin was successfully re-elected.

Russian Communist Party Chairman Jiuganov

After Yeltsin won the election, the oligarchs became increasingly expanding and almost became the actual ruler of Russia. They could even directly appoint and remove officials, from the prime minister to the minister, The entire government was in a mess, the domestic society was in chaos, the people's living standards were not as good as those in the Soviet era, and the food, clothing, housing and transportation of 140 million people were all controlled by the oligarchs.

At the inauguration ceremony of the Russian president in 1996, the seven oligarchs sat in the first row. From 1997 to 2003, the Russian oligarchs ushered in their peak period. The seven oligarchs almost controlled 50% of Russia's GDP and their wealth continued to grow. at that time Western Europe were full of Russian wealthy people who bought houses, land, and luxury goods, and even had a strange thing about buying a whole mall directly.

000, a Russian rich woman who bought a house in the UK

Russia's future

He, Putin, will he be the terminator of the oligarch?

Putin

At the beginning, the oligarch thought Putin was just the second Yeltsin, and Berezovsky was particularly arrogant. He directly told the media: "Valov has no me, so he can't be president." , and he did not leave any face for Putin. But they encountered hard rocks. Putin was not a compromiser, he was an iron-fisted politician.

In 2000, during the Second Chechen War, then Russian President Putin personally took a fighter plane to the Chechen front line

. After the power was in hand, Putin first launched the Second Chechen War in 2000, strongly defeating the Chechen separatist forces, and then took action against the seven oligarchs that had always made him feel worried.

Kremlin, Russian Presidential Palace, symbol of the Russian Federation

In 2000, Putin first attacked media tycoon Gusinsky, nationalized his media companies through compulsory measures, and expelled them from the country. After killing the chicken to warn the monkey, the oligarchs were panicked for a while.

Gusinsky, a Russian media tycoon, has a net worth of more than 10 billion US dollars, and Jewish

Immediately afterwards, Putin passed the president's executive order and even used the power of the KGB and the army. The oligarchs are unwilling to sit and wait for death. There have been several tug-of-war between Putin and the oligarchs, and many corrupt officials have also been involved, and are about to evolve into the Russian version of "Hu Lan's Prison".

Russian oil oligarchs Khodorkovsky (left) and Putin

In the end, the Russian procuratorate and police took action under Putin's instructions, and the seven major oligarchs collapsed overnight, either sent to jail or went into exile overseas.

A large number of enterprises were nationalized, and facts have proved that oligarchs have no backers and are really nothing.

Khodorkovsky was imprisoned

Oligarchy has disappeared, so what about the oligarchy economy? Did Putin really completely eliminate the oligarch? In fact, this is not the case. Because Russia's economic pillar is mainly due to the high dependence on the export of oil and gas resources, there is no large company, and it is still destined to exist.

Abramovich

Putin's confidant natural gas and oil tycoon Abramovich is the best example.

Putin just took back his political power, but there is still a long way to go for the economy.

Putin's eldest daughter Maria

Now Putin is gradually getting old, and where should Russia go in the future? That is the Russians' own historical task. Will there be a second "Putin" in ? Let's wait and see.

Putin