This is a TV series about Russia . But it could have been about Israel . Or about the UnitedStates . It is entitled “The Oligarchs” and is now being screened on Israeli television.
Some of its episodes are simply unbelievable – or would have been, if they had not comestraight from the horses’ mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about theirdespicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia .
The “oligarchs” are a tiny group of entrepreneurs who exploited the disintegration ofthe Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundredsof billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they tookcontrol of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.
In popular parlance they are called “oligarchs” – from the Greek word meaning “rule of thefew”.
In the first years of post-Soviet Russian capitalism they were the bold and nimble oneswho knew how to exploit the economic anarchy in order to acquire enormous possessions for ahundredth or a thousandth of their value: oil, natural gas, nickel and other minerals. Theyused every possible trick, including cheating, bribery and murder. Every one of them had asmall private army. In the course of the series they are proud to tell in great detail how theydid it.
But the most intriguing part of the series recounts the way they took control of thepolitical apparatus. After a period of fighting each other, they decided that it would be moreprofitable for them to cooperate in order to take over the state.
At the time, President Boris Yeltsin was in a steep decline. On the eve of the new electionsfor the presidency, his rating in public opinion polls stood at 4%. He was an alcoholic with asevere heart disease, working about two hours a day. The state was, in practice, ruled by hisbodyguard and his daughter; corruption was the order of the day.
The oligarchs decided to take power through him. They had almost unlimited funds,control of all TV channels and most of the other media. They put all these at the disposal ofYeltsin’s reelection campaign, denying his opponents even one minute of TV time and pouringhuge sums of money into the effort. (The series omits an interesting detail: they secretlybrought over the most outstanding American election experts and copywriters, who appliedmethods previously unknown in Russia .)
The campaign bore fruit: Yeltsin was indeed reelected. On the very same day he had anotherheart attack and spent the rest of his term in hospital. In practice, the oligarchs ruledRussia . One of them, Boris Berezovsky, appointed himself Prime Minister. There was a minorscandal when it became known that he (like most of the oligarchs) had acquired Israelicitizenship, but he gave up his Israeli passport and everything was in order again.
By the way, Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya , in which tens ofthousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineralresources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peaceagreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed anddestroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war hasbeen going on since then.
In the end, there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGBoperative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (MikhailKhodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, VladimirGusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)
Since all the exploits of the oligarchs occurred in public, there is a danger that theaffair might cause an increase in anti-Semitism in Russia . Indeed, the anti-Semites arguethat these doings confirm the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion ”, a document fabricated by theRussian secret police a century ago, purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control theworld.
Moving from Russia to America – the same thing happened, of course, in the US , but more thana hundred years ago. At the time, the great “robber barons”, Morgan, Rockefeller at al., all ofthem good Christians, used very similar methods to acquire capital and power on a massivescale. Today, it works in far more refined ways.
In the present election campaign, the candidates collect hundreds of millions ofdollars. George W. Bush and John Kerry both brag about their talent for raising enormous sumsof money. From whom? From pensioners? From the mythical “old lady in tennis shoes”? Of coursenot, but from the cabals of billionaires, the giant corporations and powerful lobbies (armsdealers, Jewish organiztions, doctors, lawyers and such). Many of them give money to bothcandidates – just to be on the safe side.
All of these expect, of course, to receive a generous bonus when their candidate iselected. “There is no such thing as a free lunch”, as the right-wing economist Milton Friedmanwrote. As in Russia , every dollar (or ruble) invested wisely in an election will yield a ten- orhundred-fold return.
The problem is rooted in the fact that presidential candidates (and all other candidatesfor political office) need ever increasing amounts of money. Elections are mainly fought outon TV and cost huge sums. It is not a coincidence that all the present candidates in the US aremulti-millionaires. The Bush family has amassed a fortune from the oil business (helped byits political connections, of course.) Kerry is married to one of the richest women inAmerica, who was once the wife of the ketchup king, Henry John Heinz. Dick Cheney was the chiefof a huge corporation that has garnered contracts worth billions in Iraq . John Edwards,candidate for Vice President, has made a fortune as a trial lawyer.
From time to time there is talk in America about reforming election finances, but nothingworthwhile ever comes of it. None of the oligarchs has any interest in changing a system thatenables them to buy the government of the United States .
In Israel , too, talk about “Money and Power” is now in vogue. Ariel Sharon and one of his twosons have been suspected of accepting bribes from a real estate magnate. An indictment wasblocked by the new Attorney General who happened to be appointed by the Sharon government atthe height of the affair. Another investigation into Sharon and his sons is still pending. Itconcerns millions of dollars that reached his election coffers by roundabout routes,crossing three continents.
Shimon Peres’ connections with multi-millionaires are well-known, as are the huge sumspoured out by American Jewish multi-millionaires for extreme right-wing causes in Israel .One of the Russian oligarchs is the part-owner of the second biggest Israeli newspaper.
A political scandal concerning the Israeli Minister for Infrastructure has mushroomedinto an affair involving giant multi-national corporations competing for contracts forsupplying natural gas to the Israeli Electricity Company, an affair of billions in whichunderworld figures, politicians and private investigators play their parts. Thisdisclosure has made it clear to Israelis that here, too, politicians of the highest rank havelong ago been acting as mercenaries for powerful financial interests.
These facts must alarm everybody who cares about democracy – in Israel , Russia , theUnited States and elsewhere. Oligarchy and democracy are incompatible. As a Russiancommentator in the TV series said about the new Russian democracy: “They have turned a virgininto a whore.”