Following the fall and disintegration of the Soviet Union and retreat to the Russian State, the United States envisioned taking over the country after absorbing the former soviet states.
This take over partially succeeded with mass privatization in the country, this mass privatization is similar to what happened to Africa after the 1960s to 1980s’ tumultuous years which the colonial countries unleashed on the continent in an effort to re-control the former colonies. This time it was to be with western capital and corporations as clearly indicated by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in his Book ‘NEOCOLONIALISM THE LAST STAGE OF IMPERIALISM’
What followed thereafter was the massive devastation of African economies which had made tremendous progress through industrialisation by nationalist leaders who used state power to enable the formerly colonial people to compete on the international stage with western industrialists in production of goods and services.
For the Soviet Union, the state was heavily used for not only industrialisation but its relative technological progress and research. Contrary to many false narratives, the decline and disintegration of the Soviet Union was a huge loss to humanity because it gave the imperialists a field day who later unleashed untold suffering upon the world as they grew in arrogance. The Soviet Union was the first country to go to Space, make multiple models of aircraft, and technology breakthroughs. This speaks to the rapid advance which state power can achieve on behalf of the formerly slaves and colonial subjects.
When the Soviet Union broke up, the huge country’s assets were divided among a few rich who later became super rich hence oligarchs, it is important to remember that this did not happen under President Putin. These Super-rich Russians would go on to take Russia’s money and invest it in the west hence we see people like Roman Abramovich who once bought Chelsea in England.
Let it also be remembered that as long as these Russian Oligarchs spent Russian money in and on western economies, they were not referred to as Russian oligarchs but investors. The goal of neocolonial imperialism is to create a group of bourgeoisies in every country across the globe (Local Bourgeoise) who must plug into the metropolis capitalist infrastructure to manage those countries on behalf of the imperialist united states and the west in-order to achieve the same objectives once achieved under slavery and colonialism, wealth extraction from the poor.
Enter President Putin, when President Putin came on the scene as leader of his country, he was not about to let Russia’s wealth continue enriching imperialist aggressors using these locally created bourgeoise who had curved up all state institutions and were flaunting it all across the world but mostly europe and the United States, he clamped down on these resource wasters. The Oligarchs were not to be western oligarchs of Russian extract with allegiance to western capital, they were notified that a different leader had arrived in Russia and therefore their wealth and themselves were to be allegiant to Russia first.
These rich Russian men got the message clearly, those that did not get it paid heavily, Putin had succeeded at taming capital. This Scenario is similar to what president Xi-Jinping did in China with the checking of Alibaba’s over-confident Jack Ma who thought that China’s wealth was to be integrated with western capital and the line had to be blurred. Western capitalists had seen Jack Ma’s moves as a triumph until he was tamed to their protest and black mail using their propaganda media machine. There were incessant threats about loss of confidence in the Chinese economy, which failed to happened naturally through market forces so Washington resorted to coercion, not only against China but also its own shrinking corporations who don’t want to leave China, while those who do, do it in protest.
President Putin’s arrival hence ushered in the creation of the bad Russian Oligarchs according to the west, simply because these oligarchs were controlled from Moscow and not Washington and Brussels.
While the United States and west celebrates its oligarchs, many who are pedophiles, rapists and sex traffickers like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, some who participated in tax evasion and stealing from the poor like Mark Rich who was Pardoned by the Bill Clinton Administration for Armed smuggling, many of their oligarchs who are even much more dangerous are left to spread more damage upon the planet such as pollution in the Niger Delta, just simply because they contribute to American politics, military and political campaigns.
The Bad Oligarchs as long as they are not white and not serving colonialism.
