Ex-oligarch about himself, colleagues and time

1. “Well, they will kill Berezovsky, what will happen? You were right in saying that I occupy a certain niche. I'll keep it for as long as I live. If I don’t live, someone else will definitely take over. My activity is not a whim of Berezovsky. This is generated by the system of the current government."

2. “I’m a bad analyst, I don’t think well, I don’t play chess well. But in some mysterious way I feel what will happen after a while. If we formulate this difference in logical terms, then the Russians are an inductive way of thinking, and the Jews are a deductive way.

3. “There is a concept that unites the oligarchs, on the one hand, and on the other, distinguishes them from many other communities. This is absolutely rigid rationalism and consistency in this rationalism. They do not do what is pleasant or unpleasant for them. They do what benefits them."

4. “My own experience, my life here in the West, shows that abroad will not help. At best, they won’t hand you over to be torn to pieces, roughly speaking. But they will be happy to prevent people from entering business here in the West, and will tear apart capital if it is transferred to the West.”

5. “In science, I knew: there are 1000 people who can do what I can do. But in business, no one around me was capable of this. There were few of them, people who were later called oligarchs. Feeling unique, I felt comfortable. Because, I repeat, I categorically do not like to do in life what someone else can do better than me. When I started getting involved in politics, I felt completely comfortable. Because I really have not seen my equal in many projects.”

6. “Property was not given away. It was fought out with teeth, won in the most difficult competition. It is surprising that there were few people willing to fight for more property. I don’t know very well the biographies of those who are called oligarchs today, but I know my own biography well. I had no “paw”, no protection, no “shadow capital”. He was engaged in science. I had no complexes that someone was smarter, someone stronger, more persistent. It was important that I didn’t have another complex – a national one.”

7. “When the bureaucrats were convinced that private property was here to stay, they decided to participate in the redistribution of state property. And here the position of the business community, especially the oligarchs, is fundamental. Who are they, oligarchs or oligophrenics? Let me note that oligophrenia is dementia, not dementia...”

Boris Berezovsky first person