The Oligarchs Quotes

“the late Soviet period, trading companies run by young hustlers and well-connected bureaucrats made quick fortunes this way. They bought oil cheap inside the country, paid bribes to get it across the border, sold it at world prices for hard currency, bought up personal computers from abroad, paid bribes to get the computers back inside the country, and sold them for fantastic profits, to”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“Bank Stolichny, which would become the core of Smolensky’s business for the next decade, was registered on February 14, 1989, eight months before the Berlin Wall fell.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“One line in the text, littlenoted until later, allowed the formation of financial or credit businesses as cooperatives; in other words, banks. Smolensky would eventually make a fortune from this small crack that had opened in decaying socialism. The cooperatives sprouted”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“The laws made almost every businessman and taxpayer a lawbreaker—and thus a potential criminal and thus a willing supplicant to power and, finally, a briber.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“Whereas Lenin’s formula was equality in poverty, “we are advocates of equality in the right to be rich.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“The stealing was so common and pervasive as to defy definition as criminal. “Here we are approaching the very core of socialism,” Luzhkov observed. “To a certain degree, everybody was involved, and everybody participated—and under socialism, this means nobody. That was the crucial point, the most corrupting effect of the ‘developed socialism.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia

“For Smolensky, the end of socialism began with printing Bibles.”
― David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia