Posted on 04/22/2007 10:04:04 AM PDT by Bokababe
Most people in Britain are now familiar with the scruffy, boyish and invariably unshaven features of Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, and Russia's most famous billionaire.
This week we learned that Mr Abramovich is one of a growing list of hyper-rich Russians. According to Forbes magazine Russia now has 60 billionaires.
Unlike Mr Abramovich, most of them live in Moscow, which, if I'm not much mistaken, makes the Russian capital home to more billionaires than any other city in the world.
It is quite a change for a place that 15 years ago had no millionaires, let alone billionaires.
How exactly these people have got hold of such vast wealth in such a short time is a very good question, and one many ordinary Russians would like answered.
It is one reason why Russia's richest people like to keep their identities and their lifestyles secret.
Secret city
Ever since I arrived in Russia I've heard tall stories of a secret city deep in the forests outside Moscow where the rich indulge their fantasies in sprawling palaces of marble and gold. It sounded like a good story. I didn't expect it to be true, let alone that I'd get an invite.
It came via a rather circuitous route. The sister of one of my colleagues in the BBC Moscow bureau is in the same class as the 18-year-old daughter of one of Russia's richest men.
For some peculiar reason Svetlana, not her real name, thought it would be fun to invite a BBC television crew to film her parents' country cottage.
That's what they call them in Russia: cottage. If that brings to mind white-washed walls, a thatched roof and climbing roses, then forget it.
We had agreed to meet Svetlana at a shopping mall on the edge of Moscow. Up she swept in a purple Maserati sports car. Out jumped her hulking bodyguard, dashing round to open the door for her. I don't know what I was expecting to emerge, a leggy blonde dripping with diamonds and brimming with self confidence I suppose.
Instead, out stepped a diminutive, dark-haired woman, painfully shy, and dressed like a secretary, albeit one who shops at Prada.
Her crew-cut bodyguard looked me up and down, clearly horrified at the prospect of this grubby journalist scuffing the beautiful cream leather interior of Svetlana's Maserati. There was immediate relief when I suggested I follow in the BBC's beaten up old Peugeot.
Different world
The first signs of the secret city were enormous green fences, at least 20 feet (6 metres) high, and topped off with closed circuit cameras.
Then ahead of us at the end of a long forest flanked road a gap appeared in the fence. As the Maserati approached the gate swung opens and we swept through. Suddenly we plunged out of the forest, and in to a different world. It was a little like a scene from Doctor Who. One minute we were in Russia, the next in Beverly Hills.
On either side of us huge mansions stood in spacious grounds. Some looked vaguely Georgian, others Victorian, one like a Bavarian castle. Vitaly, the BBC driver, turned to me, his face deadpan. "When did we cross the border?" he asked.
Svetlana's "cottage" was a spectacular 3,000 sq m Art Deco pile. How big is that? Big enough for an indoor swimming pool, a cinema, a bowling alley, a ballroom, and the piece de resistance, its own indoor ice rink!
"This is our newest house," Svetlana told me as we walked past a large bronze sphinx in the gardens. "My father's been building it for five years."
She wasn't sure how much it had cost, "probably 20 million," she guessed.
"So how many other houses do you have?" I asked.
"A couple in Moscow, two in the south of France, and one in Corsica," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
She shops in Paris and Milan, where she flies on one of her father's private jets.
Gilded cage
All these toys have not made Svetlana a happy girl.
"I live in a gilded cage," she told me. "I have no friends and no freedom."
I did feel sorry for her, but only a little.
A mile down the road, firmly back in Russia, I went to see Mrs Rima. The 75-year-old showed me around the one-room shack she built with her own hands.
She survives on a pension of £60 a month.
I asked her what she thinks of the rich people who live behind the high green walls.
"They're all thieves," she said. "All that money is stolen from the people."
It's a view millions of Russians would agree with. Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men.
Ok, I have an honest question - how many of the 36 men are from the same families that owned all of Russia before the revolution?
My guess is all of them.
Or, What I saw on the way to the Revolution.
Not true. The Russian aristocrats either went to exile or were exterminated or became poor. The answer is NONE.
Russian aristocracy was product of long history and many great families became powerful and affluent thanks to their role in building Russian culture and state.
The new rich acquired huge wealth in a few years of "free market" rule of Yeltsin.
My guess is all of them.
My guess would be the strongest and smartest of the Communist Party, the oligarchs, at the time of change are the ones who took over the infrastructure, with a special deference and kick back to Putin of course..
30,000 sq feet.
Why are these groups exclusive of one another?
Which one?
More like former KGB and party apparatchiks stole vast amounts of wealth in the most "unfree market" conditions imaginable.
Putin?! They took it under YELTSIN with the help of Western free market advisors.
Actually, 32,290 sq feet to be exact.
About the size of John, "Breck Girl" Edwards new digs.
Teenagers have a rebellious streak, whether their parents are factory workers or billionaires, and ignoring them tends to bring that streak to the surface. She must have slept with the bodyguard to get him to go along with the scheme, since he would obviously have gotten fired as soon as the parents got wind of this stunt. They were paying him to prevent little "Svetlana" from doing things like this. Good for her. Sounds like her parents needed a little reminder that you can't control everything with money.
That's what they call them in Russia: cottage.
That's what the nouveau riche in America's Roaring Twenties called their palaces in Rhode Island, "summer cottages". Difference is, they were fond of displaying them to the world, not concealing them.
Exactly. Remember Berezovsky, he's one of them.
Because old aristocracy to the extent that it survives consists of rather honorable, decent and well-bred people.
Those who grabbed the national assets under Yeltsin were often venal, vulgar, crafty, ruthless and indifferent to the common good. Their ticket to become wealthy were connections with the more corrupt parts of Soviet apparatus and with more unscrupulous segments of Western establishments.
I know nothing of the Romanovs, or their peers, or where they are now.
But I have noted that many times, if you take all the money and peanut butter it around, you will find that some years down the road, the formerly rich are once again rich, and the formerly destitute are once again, destitute.
For an extreme example, look at lottery winners in the US.
So how does one become a billionaire in Russia? Who did they rob?
I did not know until know. I entered a search for Yakov Barsky and got quite a few returns. I am going to look them up.
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