The Hidden Hand within the Tribes

During the Clinton Administration, most of Russia’s foreign trade was being handled by “private trading companies,” Paul Klebnikov writes in Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. The oligarchs “dismantled everything,” he writes. They “began liberalization in the absence of any control at all (when) foreign entrepreneurs, mostly crooked ones, arrived and taught our entrepreneurs how to do it.”

The Western executives had overproduced the Saudi oil wells, putting a cork in the spigot of what was expected to be endless wealth with which to fund the development of the world. Now the kleptocrats were in control of the former Soviet Union and trying to plunder the assets and natural resources of Russia and its satellite states as quickly as they could while the federal government bankrolled their exploits.

Read the rest of the article on Susan’s Substack.

(c) Susan Bradford 2024

www.susanbradford.org

[wpedon id=”1650″ align=”center”]