Many of Russia’s first businessmen, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the future oil tycoon turned political prisoner, emerged from the ranks of the Young Communist League. Komsomol activists were young, cynical and ruthless. They had none of the idealism or the baggage of their fathers and all the frustrations of a hungry elite constrained by the doldrums of Soviet ideology. They could not care less about Bukharin or the New Economic Policy and embraced with a vengeance the opportunity offered by perestroika.
