The US Treasury has called all Russian billionaires “oligarchs.” Is this right? Who are the “oligarchs”?

The US Treasury presented the so-called “Kremlin report”. This document lists the names of 210 Russians against whom the United States may impose sanctions in the future. The main criteria for compiling the list were the following: proximity to President Vladimir Putin and the degree of influence on the Russian economy. Including 96 Russian “oligarchs” - the list is called: List of Oligarchs.

The first 96 people from the Russian Forbes list for 2017 were included in the open list. That is, everyone who has a billion dollars or more.

No, this is clearly not an exhaustive definition. As many remember from history lessons, the term “oligarchy” originally described a form of government in ancient Greece and Rome, in which power was exercised by a small group of people. According to Aristotle , an oligarchy is something like a degenerate aristocracy, when people make their way to power thanks to their wealth and connections, and not to their merits. The word “oligarchy” itself is translated from Greek as “the power of the few.”

Modern dictionaries give similar definitions , emphasizing that oligarchs use power for their own interests, often to enrich themselves. The Oxford Dictionary defines "oligarch" as "a very wealthy businessman with great political influence" and adds parenthetically, "especially in Russia."

Strictly speaking, there is no single correct definition. But, as a rule, this concept is explained as follows: oligarchs in Russia are a group of the richest businessmen who control a significant part of resources and have a great influence on the government.

Oligarchs appeared during the transition from the Soviet economy to the market model of modern Russia. The term itself appeared in the mid-1990s - there is no consensus on who was the first to use it in its current meaning.

Many people consider an important point in the history of the Russian oligarchy to be Boris Berezovsky's interview with the Financial Times in 1996 - then Berezovsky named seven people who, according to him, actually control more than half of the Russian economy and determine government policy. At the same time, the famous concept of “seven bankers” appeared. Here's who was on Berezovsky's list:

• Alexander Smolensky (Capital Bank)
• Vladimir Potanin (ONEXIM Bank)
• Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Menatep)
• Vladimir Gusinsky (Bridge)
• Peter Aven and Mikhail Fridman (Alpha)
• Boris Berezovsky (Logovaz and United Bank)

According to economist Leonid Polishchuk, the oligarchy arose because after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a consensus among the state and society that large-scale and unpopular economic reforms were easier to carry out with “democratic institutions disabled.” And such institutions as, for example, an independent court existed only nominally. Society was underrepresented in power, and this vacuum was filled by organized interest groups - oligarchs.

No, you can look at this term more broadly. In their 2005 article, economists Sergei Guriev and Andrei Rachinsky explain: an oligarch is a businessman who has sufficient resources to influence national politics. They include businessmen in the list of oligarchs not only by the size of their fortune, but also by sales volume and the number of jobs they represent.

It's a difficult question. On the one hand, the influence of specific businessmen on the government has decreased compared to the times of the “seven bankers,” which gives the Russian authorities reason to talk about the absence of “oligarchs” in the country. On the other hand, the same Forbes list contains businessmen who are considered “Putin’s friends” and have made their fortune thanks, in part, to government contracts. According to public opinion polls , Russians still consider the “oligarchs” an institution that still plays a significant role in the country - more so even than the Federation Council or the State Duma.

We don't know, but perhaps it's because in the US the word is used with a different meaning. There is no official definition of the concept of “oligarch” in American law, although the word itself appears. Even before the publication of the report, analysts at the consulting agency Wolf Global assumed that the American authorities would consider all billionaires to be oligarchs, because de facto these are synonyms.

Alexander Borzenko, Alexander Polivanov