Last Days of the First Oligarch

Suicide in England signals end of an era

With Boris Berezovsky’s death at the end of March, a Russian era came to a close.

Berezovsky was the embodiment of 1990s Russian oligarchy. He pulled the political strings during the Yeltsin era and even cleared Vladimir Putin’s path to power, only to see Putin turn on him, forcing him to flee Russia.

Berezovsky was found by his bodyguard, in the bathroom of the oligarch’s suburban London home. Clues at the scene led police to conclude that the 67-year-old’s death was “consistent with hanging.” Yet an investigation was still in progress at press time, and toxicology results were still pending.

Russian pundits, meanwhile, could not bring themselves to believe that Berezovsky, detested by most Russians and criminally prosecuted in absentia, had killed himself, that he would have simply given up after more than a decade of fighting against Putin. Close acquaintances say Berezovsky became depressed after he lost a multimillion dollar lawsuit to Boris Abramovich – an oligarch and former business partner who continues to have close ties with the Kremlin – but recently seemed to be on the mend.

Berezovsky was the sort of brilliant, connected entrepreneur that epitomized 1990s Russian capitalism, making billions through shady privatization schemes, then exerting influence in high places to further increase his power and wealth.

He was born in Moscow; his father was an engineer and his mother was a medical researcher. He excelled academically and published many scholarly papers in mathematics. His first business involved selling VAZ cars from Russia’s huge Togliatti auto plant. From there, his fortune extended to banking and, notably, media, including television. The latter was a main weapon in his power brokerage arsenal.

Many have credited Berezovsky with plucking Vladimir Putin out of obscurity to serve as prime minister to the ailing President Yeltsin, assuring Putin’s ascendancy when Yeltsin resigned. But in this Berezovsky seems to have miscalculated. For Putin came to rely increasingly on his contacts in the security services, rather than on Berezovsky, eventually leading to the latter’s self-chosen exile in the UK when the two had a falling out.

In the years that followed, Berezovsky was a convenient scapegoat, blamed for everything from murdering whistleblower FSB operative Alexander Litvinenko to bankrolling mass anti-Putin protests. In his last interview, with Forbes Russia shortly before his death, Berezovsky said that he saw no point in living.

In fact, Berezovsky reportedly hoped to return to Russia and even sent Putin a letter asking to be let back in, perhaps in exchange for leniency in criminal probes. Why he would choose to commit suicide after setting in motion life-changing plans is unknown.

“The last phrase of the novel [1984] is ‘He loved Big Brother,’” said Boris Vasiliev, a long-time Berezovsky acquaintance who headed many of the oligarch’s media projects, in an interview with New Times magazine. “That is defeat. And Boris? No, he escaped Putin’s law and order.”

“I owe him for all that I have become,” Vasiliev continued. “I think Putin is also sad. Berezovsky was also a part of his life.”