Putinomics Quotes

“Sobchak did not abandon the city’s democratic institutions, but after his election, the former law professor focused his efforts on strengthening law enforcement and tax collection. He turned to his former student in the law faculty at Leningrad State University, Vladimir Putin, for help.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“There has indeed been greed and theft aplenty in modern Russia, as the gaudy palaces and missile-armed yachts show. Much of this has been related to the president’s friends, who have used corrupt contracts with state-owned firms to accumulate fortunes worth billions of dollars. The cost of this corruption is not only the money diverted from better uses, but also the investments that did not occur because potential entrepreneurs feared for the safety of their firms.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Evidence is plentiful, however, that the system of shell companies and offshore bank accounts that Russia’s elite use to hide their financial dealings from prying eyes has shaped Russian financial and corporate life.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Roldugin, who has been a friend of Putin since the 1970s, is said to be the person who introduced the Russian president to his former wife. He is the godfather of Putin’s daughter Maria. These connections, rather than any evident business skill, allowed him to amass a tremendous fortune.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Many Russians had supported macroeconomic stabilization because they believed it was a necessary foundation for economic progress. Kudrin counseled continued caution. But many Russians believed that, because the country had sorted out its finances, it was time to reap the benefits of growth.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The coalition that backed Putinomics understood the link between financial stability and political stability.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Gazprom’s new management was little better than the Vyakhirev-era elite.63 The company was widely alleged to facilitate corruption through its procurement deals. Many companies that supply Gazprom are owned by long-time friends of Putin’s,”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The oil industry—which in productivity terms was one of the great success stories of privatization—also began a slow but steady renationalization”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“One poll in July 2003 found that 88 percent of Russians believed that all large fortunes were accumulated illegally, while 77 percent wanted privatization results fully or partially reversed, and 57 percent supported criminal investigations against oligarchs.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Khodorkovsky won few allies in this fight. His contempt for government officials was alienating, as were his demands that the government fire officials on the sole grounds that he found them incompetent”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Aggressive tax minimization was not Khodorkovsky’s only sin. He began talks to build an oil pipeline to China, directly against the government’s wishes. He was seemingly unfazed by opposing the Kremlin on an issue central to Russia’s foreign policy. In contrast to Khodorkovsky’s vision, Putin wanted a pipeline that stretched all the way to the Pacific rather than delivering oil directly to China. The president repeatedly made his views on the subject known, pointedly declining to endorse Khodorkovsky’s pipeline plan while on a state visit to Beijing.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Yukos continued to use regional tax minimization schemes more aggressively than any other oil firm.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Khodorkovsky identified and fired mafia-linked employees who siphoned off Yukos’s oil.22 He slashed Yukos’s workforce, ordering his security service to keep a list of employees who came to work drunk—a persistent problem in desolate Siberian oil towns—and ordered that 90 percent of them be fired.23 Yukos also cut “social payments” to oil towns, which in lieu of a functioning tax system funded social services from subsidized housing to child care.24 His methods were merciless, and they provoked violent pushback from mafias and oil towns, which were harmed by benefit cuts and demands that wages be tied to productivity. But Khodorkovsky was undeniably effective. In the first three years that Khodorkovsky controlled Yukos, the firm’s production costs fell by two-thirds.25”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“In the early 1990s, Khodorkovsky made a fortune by attracting government deposits to his bank and speculating against the collapsing ruble. His bank, Menatep, was the largest holder of government funds, and much of the profit he made as a banker came at the government’s expense.19 Khodorkovsky used his banking business to expand into other sectors, purchasing the Yukos oil company at a knock-down price in 1995 through a scandal-plagued privatization scheme.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Khodorkovsky had always stood out for his supreme self-confidence and his lack of political tact. He founded his first major business venture, Menatep Bank, in the late 1980s, taking advantage of connections forged in the Communist Youth League.17 In the early days after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Youth League was filled with ardent Communists, but by the final decades of the Soviet Union its primary use was providing networking opportunities for ambitious young adults. It was an environment in which Khodorkovsky thrived. He used the Communist Youth League’s official status to obtain seed capital for his bank, which grew rapidly into a business worth many millions of dollars.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Putin himself publicly emphasized the importance of political stability to energy investment. “I worked in Saint Petersburg on a great many different projects,” Putin explained in an interview in 2000. “If we’re going from one putsch to another, and no one knows when the next putsch is coming and how it will end, then who will invest?”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Russia’s oil industry would be dominated by Putin and his allies. This policy had clear costs in terms of deterring foreign investment and reducing efficiency”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Putin threatened, alluding to Stalin’s promise to eliminate kulaks—rich peasants—as a class. Stalin’s antikulak campaign caused many thousands of violent deaths. Putin wanted the oligarchs to understand: he was tough, too. “The state has a club, the kind that you only need to use once: over the head,” Putin explained. “We haven’t used the club yet. But when we get seriously angry, we will use this club without hesitation.”62 The oligarchs had been warned.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Putin was not unsympathetic to the needs of business, but he saw higher tax revenue as key to restoring central authority and announced that he would brook no opposition to his campaign to raise revenue.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The state has the right to expect entrepreneurs to observe the rules of the game,” Putin explained in July 1999.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The greatest change was the increasing importance of commodities to Russia’s leading businessmen, not only oil but also aluminum, nickel, and steel.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The oligarchs’ business model was changing, too. In the early 1990s, most of the great fortunes were made in banking, by taking advantage of high inflation or otherwise stealing from the state. But the 1998 crash had driven many of the oligarchs’ banks out of business.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The Russian public wanted to see the oligarchs cut down to size and their political influence reduced. That was a tall order—but the oligarchs as a class were indeed changing. Those who had acquired assets in the 1990s wanted to see those assets defended, so they tended to support efforts to reduce the power of mafias and criminal organizations—groups that use their power to seize others’ businesses.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“The government made no attempt to raise the magnitude of revenues that would have been necessary to rebuild a welfare state, for example, or to hike investment in health and education.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Only 8 percent of large businesses paid taxes in cash, while the rest paid in kind or not at all.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“In 1996, one study reported, “26 tax collectors were killed, 74 were injured in the course of their work, 6 were kidnapped, and 41 had their homes burnt down.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“President Putin has been a stealthy reformer yearning for consensus.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“leader Gennady Zyuganov, who looked likely to defeat Yeltsin, threatened to reverse privatizations that constituted the basis of the oligarchs’ fortunes. “If Zyuganov wins the Russian presidency . . . he will undo several years of privatization and this will lead to bloodshed and all-out civil war,” thundered longtime Yeltsin aide Anatoly Chubais in 1996.39 Chubais convinced the oligarchs to set aside their disputes and mobilize against the Communists. They poured millions into Yeltsin’s campaign and—to everyone’s surprise—Yeltsin won a second term.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Most famously, Yeltsin made a pact with the oligarchs before the 1996 presidential election. Communist”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia

“Borrowing rubles, converting them into dollars, and paying back depreciated rubles several months later provided banks with substantial profits. The model was simple, but the returns were enormous, allowing oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Potanin to accumulate vast fortunes.”
― Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia