>
> Would be interested in Chris Doss' opinion of the book by the
> FT or London Sunday Times journo, "Berezovky: Godfather of the
> Kremlin." Has material on Marc Rich.
Well, John Dolan (who I suspect is really Matt Taibbi, but what do I know?) of eXile has an opinion:
---- The Socialism of Fools By John Dolan
A long time ago Nietzsche asked, "What in us really wants truth?" This question hangs over many of the books purporting to tell what went wrong with Russia in the nineties.
Telling the truth is by no means a simple matter. There are important questions involved, such as, "When did you decide to tell the truth?" and "Why did you start telling it?" Both "when?" and "why?" apply to recent attempts to tell the truth about Russia. "When?" should be asked of the many American academics who shilled for the thieves right up to the '98 crash, and then, when no more bluffing was possible, suddenly began decrying the horrors they'd helped to create. In Klebnikov's case, the key question is "Why?" - why has Klebnikov, a fervently pro-capitalist journalist, written such a vitriolic attack on the leading figure in Russia's transition to capitalism? Klebnikov, after all, writes for Forbes, the proud "Capitalist Tool," most militant of the the counterrevolutionary journals. And when he talks about capitalism in the West, Klebnikov shows the rah-rah spirit one would expect from a Forbes reporter. This is the ideological anomaly at the heart of the book: Klebnikov writes about Berezovsky and his "reformist" front men with real hatred, in the language of a far-left activist. He details their looting of Russia, freely quoting Yavlinsky's bitter attacks on Gaidar and Chubais, and concludes that capitalism in the absence of a strong state is no more than robbery. There is real hatred in his descriptions of Gaidar and Chubais - though oddly enough, no such hatred for Yeltsin, who surely deserves as much blame as any of his minions. Another anomaly, another clue that there is something odd going on in this book.
[http://www.exile.ru/108/bookreview.php] ----
I think you get the point from the title of the review.
-david