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About LinkBacksThey didn't need any 1 mil Euro. And as you know, the Euro didn't exist back then. They would have used Dollars or D Mark. But nowhere near that. If you really want to know about this, some of the oligarchs have actually written memoirs. I assume they explain some of this. Boris Berezovsky for example, wrote a memoir, I think. I haven't read it, but I've seen interviews with him.Originally Posted by Antonio1986
They bought entire factories and mines for much less than that!
They borrowed the money abroad, and had made some of it during glasnost when some limited capitalism was allowed, co-ops and the like. Against that, they could borrow more.
In all honesty, a very large proportion, if not the majority of the oligarchs are Jewish. So they may have taken advantage of the opportunity to emigrate to Israel in the 1980s, made a bit of hard currency there, and taken a loan, then returned to the USSR. I think a few people did that, and their Israeli citizenship meant they could circumvent some of the local laws even though they were for all extent and purposes Russians.
Also, super rich people from the US, like George Soros etc, made funds available for those wanting to invest in Eastern Europe. Western banks knew what was going on in Eastern Europe and they knew that anyone who bought anything there was paying well below the market price. I don't know how the banks in the USSR worked, and whether they would have lent people money for investments in the late 1980s.
It probably varied from person to person, but they bought HUGE enterprises for RIDICULOUSLY low sums of money, and money was made available to Russians who figured out capitalism before everybody else.
A lot of rich people or corporations across the world were all to keen to see the USSR sold off and thus lose the opportunity to ever make a comeback as a socialist country.
If these oligarchs just stole this money without using any skill, cleverness, innovation, social contribution the government should confiscate everything.
Russians should wake up
They know it... Check the political forum.
And the oligarchs were clever and bold. Not very ethical probably, and they did not invent anything. But it was probably hard work to figure out how to make a Soviet factory or mine profitable internationally while hanging on to skilled labour and preventing looting. Not to say I admire them, I don't. They were like clever parasites who took advantage of a very unusual situation.
But unfortunately it took regular people in Russia too long to figure out what was happening to their country. By the time normal people really understood capitalism and had a competent president, it was too late.
Some of us said for a year or two "They are crazy! They are selling out everything they worked for, for 70 years. For a stupid BigMac and a pair of Levis" But then, all the dirt on the USSR came out, it was black painted. People thought it was a cruel country and modern Russia a dump. For a few years people thought Russia was a country of gangsters, alcoholics, crooks and prostitutes. Everyone turned their back on Russia. That was Russia's darkest moment, in the 1990s. Then things improved, with Putin and oil/gas money after that.
Russia has had the most insane modern history of any country in the world really. That's one of the reasons I find it so intriguing. They have experienced everything there.
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