ABSTRACT
During the 1990s a new class of wealthy owners of banks, raw material properties, industrial enterprises, media companies, and real estate emerged in Russia. This chapter begins by considering the completion of the privatization of state property in the mid-1990s and the formation of a small group of super-rich and powerful individuals popularly known as the “oligarchs.” By the mid-1990s a few financial-industrial groups emerged that controlled many of Russia’s major banks and nonfinancial companies.
