Oligarchs

In this saga of brilliant triumphs and magnificent failures, David E. Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, sheds light on the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men, Alexander Smolensky, Yuri Luzhkov, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky,Hoffman shows how a rapacious, unruly capitalism was born out of the ashes of Soviet communism.

"[Hoffman's] account is the most dramatic and comprehensive yet... What makes this account both devastating and entertaining is the way Hoffman has pieced it together... he has read far and wide, and operated like a probing private eye." (New York Times Book Review) "[Hoffman's] book may well be the most authoritative account we will ever get of the early days of the four true 'oligarchs'... He describes and analyzes so well the methods by which money and power were grabbed in the new Russia." (New York Review of Books) "One of the most vivid and well-researched accounts to date of this tumultuous period in recent Russian history." (Newsweek) "Hoffman makes the tale of the men's rise and fall a masterful blend of adventure and serious, informed analysis." (Foreign Affairs) "In his devastating portrait of the so-called Russian oligarchy...Hoffman's... account provides us with more than its share of instruction...Hoffman brilliantly shows how seemingly halting and insignificant acts finally culminated in changes in a whole society." (Washington Post)"

David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor at the Washington Post. He covered the White House during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and was subsequently diplomatic correspondent and Jerusalem correspondent. From 1995 to 2001, he served as Moscow bureau chief, and later as foreign editor and assistant managing editor for foreign news. He is the author of The Dead Hand, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

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