Russia: An oligarch’s mistake, an oligarch’s fate

Boris Kagarlitsky writes an obituary for Boris Abramovich Berezovsky who died in London on March 23, 2013 in Russia: An oligarch’s mistake, an oligarch’s fate.

Berevovsky's tragedy was a failure to accept the constraints of capitalist rule in a dependent country:

Most of the oligarchs of the 1990s understood and accepted the new rules, at times helping to draw them up. Berezovsky, however, could not adapt his personal nature to the new regime, and it was this, far more than his political disagreements with President Putin, that sealed his downfall. Worst of all, once the Russian oligarch had arrived in that very same West which he had sincerely viewed as a model and ideal, he turned out to be incapable of fitting in with life there – neither with political life, nor even with business. Unlike his pupil and rival Roman Abramovich, who assimilated perfectly the first rule of successful business – don’t stick your neck out unless you have to – Berezovsky was constantly coming out with one initiative or another, getting involved in political conflicts, declaring his ideas.

Despite a Marxist education, he failed to appreciate the class interests of the Capitalists is about stability for exploitation.

The capitalists live in fear of the masses, and thereby employ a superstructure to keep the masses in their place through docility, bribes, fear, and division. Stirring up the masses is a very dangerous activity.