Russian robber-baron potentially powerless in country he shaped

Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky — who amassed what some experts believe to be a multi-billion-dollar fortune through murky business dealings and connections to Russian prime ministers and presidents — is unsure of what the future under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds for him, he said yesterday.

Putin, who remains largely a mysterious figure in the West, is widely expected to win the upcoming Russian presidential election March 26.

Berezovsky, speaking through a translator during an address in Dodds Auditorium, said people have asked him, "Could it not happen that the next day [Putin] will not put you in jail?"

"I have no guarantee that will not take place," Berezovsky admitted.

"What I know about [Putin] is positive," Berezovsky said in an interview after the speech. "It's very important to know about him because we don't have limits on his power," he added. The Russian constitution allows the country's president to wield significantly more power than his Western counterparts.

Berezovsky enjoyed close ties with former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, but could face a range of allegations — including illegal financial dealings — if his relationship with the next president is less cordial.

Nevertheless, he remains one of the most influential and controversial businessmen in Russia.

"You don't get the chance [to speak with Berezovsky] very often, and so I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said David Remnick '81, editor of The New Yorker and author of two books on contemporary Russia. "In the same way that you would want to see a member of the Politburo in the Communist era, whether you like him or not, that is not the point."

Some experts believe an oligarchy of Russian business tycoons is strangling Russia's economy. Berezovsky — who holds a Ph.D. in systems theory — said the business elite's sudden and enormous wealth is a natural and inevitable result of privatization.

Berezovsky, like other oligarchs — as the most powerful Russian business tycoons are called — benefited from the privatization of government assets that began with Russia's transition to capitalism in 1989. He turned his small automobile company, LogVaz, into a media, aviation, metals and oil empire, University Russian studies director Stephen Kotkin said in an interview Sunday.

Marie Bennigsen Broxup, an expert on Russian politics and editor of the Central Asian Study journal, said in an interview Friday, "He owns Russia. Partly."

Berezovsky said he agrees Russia's oligarchy hurts the nation's economy and political system. "The economy is totally inefficient and it will be totally inefficient until there is a fair distribution of property," he said. "The level of corruption is directly proportional to the distribution of property."

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

But he said that competition — which will now accelerate as Russia's efforts to privatize business near completion — will redistribute the nation's wealth and make it more economically efficient.

He added, however, that the concentration of wealth in Russia does not mean the transition to capitalism was poorly executed.

"Why in 1917, when the revolution took place in Russia, did a civil war take place? And why, when there was a revolution in the opposite direction, there was no civil war?" Berezovsky asked. "The criteria of the success of privatization is this — that there has been no civil war."

Berezovsky will have the opportunity to push the pro-market economic reforms he favors as a newly elected representative in the lower house of Russia's parliament. His voice in parliament is amplified by the Unity Party's recent victory in parliamentary elections, which many experts credit to Berezovsky.