Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition

Russian politics has been dominated over the last decade or more by the relationship between the so-called 'oligarchs' and the state. The oligarchs are the super-wealthy business people who came to dominate the economy, and some would say the political system as well, under Yeltsin, but who have had to cope with a far more difficult head of state in the person of Vladimir Putin. Existing studies of the oligarchs and their relationship with the Russian state tend to be damning on two grounds: the…