Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition by Stephen Fortescue (review)

Abstract

774 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 of the economic and political structure,but a weakness in that itdetracts from themajor theme of the book. Reforms under Brezhnev and Khrushchev, for example, were more about centralization and decentralization, departmental ization and administrative hierarchies ? the reader might have been pointed more explicidy to how such topicswere linked to the ownership of assets. The book has appeal to those in political studies: ithas detailed consider ation of recent developments under Putin and his conflicts with Gusinskii, Berezovskii, Abramovich; and there is a in depth discussion of the Yukos controversy. Here the author shifts attention to relations between interests in the state system and challenges by those in the economy, and to industrial organization and reorganization. The book's conclusion does not analyse the role of property ownership in the transformation process, but discusses the multiple actors involved and the implications forpolicy makers. The book can be recommended for specialists in politics concerned with the transformation of property relations inRussia and ithas a good literature review of mainly American sources on economic and political transition. Emmanuel College,Cambridge David Lane Fortescue, Stephen. Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State inTransition. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2006. xv + 233 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00. Modern Russia appears inmany ways to have turned the clock back to the days when itmight have seemed, inThomas Carlyle's words, that the 'his tory of the world is but the biography of great men'. Gorbachev, El'tsin, Putin, siloviki, oligarchs ? the great engines of economic and social evolution seem just to provide the backdrop to these colossi as they reshape their country. Of course, the reality is that the human agents are empowered, constrained, elevated and becalmed by thewider and deeper forces affecting Russia but, for thepresent, personalities and their interactions do seem toplay a remarkable role in the country's progress. In this context, while there is a solid body of biographical literature on successive leaders and also a growing body of research on the new elite of the siloviki whom Putin has raised from thepolice, securityapparatus and military, it is strikinghow fragmentary the research on themajor business-people has been. There are studies of particular individuals and events, but surprisingly littleon these 'oligarchs' as a whole. What literature there is tends to come from journalists and concentrates on the horror stories of privatization ? of which there are admittedly many ? rather than subsequent economic management and consolidation. This book thus fills an important and relatively underpopulated niche. Stephen Fortescue, associate professor in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales, has had a career spanning both the academic and business worlds. He has certainly done his homework, as this is a detailed, intricate and thoroughly referenced work. He has also set out to answer a range of interesting and important questions. From the reviews 775 very first,he challenges the accuracy and utility of the term 'oligarchs' as the businesspeople in question have made no efforts to gain formal political power. At the same time, he has to accept that ithas become impossible to avoid, however much itneeds to be treatedwith caution. Beyond this, he explores whether they are canny entrepreneurs or corrupt asset-strippers, how they firstgot theirmoney, what they have done with it, and whether they are as much of a malign force inpolitics and the economy as their detractors suggest. His overall conclusions are that while their origins are varied (and certainly in some cases shadowy) they are 'clever, adaptable people who have at the very least restored to health and atmost transformed the sectors they are involved in' (p. 174). Although he clearly tries to be even-handed, Fortescue ultimately sees the oligarchs in a positive light.To him, the greater danger is that Putin or his successor swings either towards effective renationalization or the Latin American-style populist politics of dispossession. Instead, he argues that the government and people must 'recognize the rightof the oligarchs to exist and evolve' (p. 179) and wait for these personalized business empires to become 'normal' corporations over time and generations. This sounds perhaps a little optimistic, and...