Their customs

Sociologist Elizabeth Shimpfessl, author of the book “Madly Rich Russians”, says in an interview with Forbes :

“In 2018, I told all my respondents that the book was published and invited to a presentation in London. The millionaires wrote: "Oh, thank you what they said, we will definitely buy several copies." The billionaires reacted differently: some of them asked to send them copies for free. < ... >

This situation almost reminded me of the caricature portraits of the "capitalist sharks" from Soviet times: super -rich do not think about how things are with other people with money. < ... >

... Some of the billionaires directly told me that it was necessary to help strong, not weak, referring to the laws of biology, and claimed that the future of Russia depends on this.

They also do not hesitate to call themselves sexists. One oligarch informed me that he was a sexist, and then for some reason he considered it necessary to explain that "a sexist is not a fan of sex." < ... >

It is interesting that recently a fresh narrative began to appear in how they explain the legitimacy of their privileged position. If at the beginning of the zero they all searched in the massively - and most often found - the noble roots (which is a little ridiculous, if you consider what a small percentage of aristocrats was in pre -revolutionary Russia), then recently references to cultural connection with the Soviet intelligentsia began to appear in these stories. It is important for the bourgeois class to rely on a cultural background in the past. Relatively recently, Russian rich changed their minds to look for noble ancestors and began to rely on what they really had - the origin of the Soviet intelligentsia. < ... >

Moreover, some of them even sees themselves as moral leaders. They told me about their mission to create civil society and enlighten the people, instilling legal and civil values. It is not entirely clear where exactly they got such powers. Partly belonging to the Soviet intelligentsia, which, unlike the noble roots, is not fictitious, helps to build a foundation on which you can rely on this type of claims. < ... >

There was an American study, from which it follows that the below people are on the scale of social well -being, the more likely they believe that in life a lot depends on the circumstances. And representatives of privileged elites, who were born in dynasties with the name and condition, are most convinced that the main condition for success is personal achievements, talents and good genetics from their ancestors.

Russian oligarchs are distinguished only by the fact that almost all of them got rich in a certain historical period, which provided them with the opportunity for such rapid growth. Therefore, their lectures addressed to young entrepreneurs are now absurd now to do to get rich. It would be best, of course, to these young entrepreneurs to return to the past and start to get rich there, because now these lecturers themselves would not be able to become billionaires from scratch. ”