World Press on Boris Berezovsky's Death (March 27, 2013)

The New Yorker has published an exhaustive article by Masha Lipman devoted to the outstanding Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead in his house in England last week.

"In the Russia of the nineteen-nineties, Berezovsky was the one-man powerhouse of national politics, one of the country’s richest tycoons, and the kingmaker behind Vladimir Putin’s ascent to the Presidency in 2000," the article reads.

The author pays special attention to Berezovsky's rise and the unique power he enjoyed in Russia.

"Berezovsky’s amazing rise from a Soviet academic to billionaire and master political operator was a phenomenon of the nineteen-nineties. Following the 1991 meltdown of the Soviet Union, the government of the Russian Federation was dysfunctional, its constitution not yet written, rules virtually non-existent, and vast state properties were up for grabs. It was a time when the adventurous, the entrepreneurial, and the unscrupulous hurriedly seized factories, plants, banks, oil, and metal enterprises. It was a tough struggle in which business disputes were commonly resolved by violence and murder," she writes.

According to the article, Berezovsky made a fatal mistake appointing Vladimir Putin as President Yeltsin's protégé.

"For all his energy, his immense ego, and his mastery of political manipulation, Berezovsky turned out to be an oddly naïve man," Lipman writes. "As soon as he took office, Putin started to weaken each and every possible challenger to his authority: local governors, national television, business tycoons—he took them under control one by one. His core belief was that nobody could defy the power of the state, and that power was embodied by the man at the top—himself. Those who enriched themselves in Russia should remember that they owed their wealth to Putin, not to their own personality or entrepreneurial talents. As the supreme arbiter, he decides who gets punished and who acts with impunity."

Lipman believes that in spite of it all, Berezovsky was undoubtedly a remarkable person.

"It is hard to imagine a figure as unloved by his compatriots as Berezovsky was. But there’s still one thing he should be given credit for: he was a man of grand, Shakespearean scope. And Putin’s Russia is no country for grand personalities," she writes.

"His gradual decline, his eventual surrender, and his death leave a sense of deep sadness. It’s a final reminder that the nineties are irrevocably gone—for all the confusion, hardship, and utter unfairness of that time, one could discern a glimpse of hope that Russia would break free from the perennial curse of the dominant state and powerless man," the article reads.