A fast-paced biography of Jewish oligarch Boris Berezovsky reads like a thriller.
By ELAINE MARGOLINUpdated: JUNE 18, 2015 16:14Boris Berezovsky(photo credit: KIERAN DOHERTY/REUTERS)
Ben Mezrich chases down exhilarating real-life stories about brilliant but often ruthless men who relish their wealth, fame and power, with an outsider’s sense of revenge.Mezrich is attracted to winners and risk-takers; men who will do whatever it takes to get what they want, without too much remorse or regret.The 46-year-old Harvard-educated author is a handsome and charming man, and a captivating writer. He is already a wealthy man, too; his books sell extremely well, and are often made into hit movies.But it still feels at times as if Mezrich sees himself as a geeky Jewish outcast of sorts, who is still being kept out of the top tier.Perhaps that is what drove him to write so passionately about Mark Zuckerberg’s rise to power at Facebook; Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires, describes an awkward, angry and often ill-at-ease Zuckerberg troubled by the standoffish WASP culture that continues to dominate Harvard and American business. The book was made into Academy Award-winning movie The Social Network, which showed us the compromises and cold decisions Zuckerberg most likely made in order to ensure he was the one left at the top at Facebook; alone and in full control.Mezrich is drawn to men who are able to shatter boundaries, even with a moral fluidity others would find troubling. In his new book, Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs – A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal and Murder, he chronicles the life of Boris Berezovsky.Berezovsky was a Jew and former math professor who rose to unthinkable heights after Perestroika, building a multibillion- dollar oil and aluminum empire with the assistance of his younger partner, Roman Abramovich. This occurred as the nation’s largest companies were undergoing privatization, ending up in the hands of a handful of men who became Russia’s new oligarchs. Under Boris Yeltsin, they acquired 50 percent of the nation’s GDP.Mezrich describes for us a frenetic Russia saturated with obscene levels of cronyism and violence. But he also shows us how for some, doors swung open that had been sealed shut for centuries.This was the case for Berezovsky; he moved quickly in establishing connections everywhere. He became an invaluable confidante to Yeltsin and his daughter, and was instrumental in getting Yeltsin reelected in 1996. He was behind the decision to choose Vladmir Putin to replace Yeltsin six months before the general election in 2000. He had close ties at the FSB, the organization that replaced the KGB.Berezovsky came to believe himself unstoppable.But when he used his newly acquired television station to criticize Putin, Putin came after him – announcing to the public that “those who combine power and capital – in the future, these oligarchs will cease to exist as a class.”Berezovsky had always thought Putin would be easy to handle; that he was loyal, malleable and would not cross him. He was wrong: The oligarch was forced to flee to London, where he received asylum. He spent years there attempting to fight Putin from abroad, but ultimately died by his own hand at 67 in March 2013.He met his end as a depressed and defeated man who never recovered from his fall from power.Mezrich’s narrative is based on numerous interviews, multiple first-person sources – who for the most part have chosen to remain anonymous – and thousands of pages of court documents. But it is the author’s talent that allows this story to blossom into a full-blown thriller.The chapters are brief and enveloping, and build in intensity. He writes with a wonderful sense of rhythm and a cinematic flair. He is terrific at imagining what drove Berezovsky to do what he did, and why he found it impossible to stop.Mezrich writes, “Impatience, ambition, the ability to dream big and live even bigger – none of these things had mattered in the Russia of his childhood. The best a young, mathematically gifted Jewish kid from Moscow, with no connections among the Communist elite and no knowledge of the outside world, could have hoped for was a doctorate in mathematics from one of the few universities that accepted the less desirable ethnicities.No matter how many awards he’d gone on to win, or papers he’d published, he’d been heading towards a simple, quiet life of books and laboratories.”Sometimes the reader almost senses Mezrich’s envy of men like Berezovsky; men who make their way in the world via their own cunning, savvy and fearless bravado.Men who refuse to fail.How did Berezovsky do it? He started by founding a computer software company that led to a profitable connection with a new Russian car company, AvtoVAZ.Berezovsky arranged to take large numbers of cars on consignment and sell them; he waited to pay back the balance to AvtoVAZ so that by the time he made good on his debt, he was making 600% profit on every automobile he sold.Mezrich is a gritty realist and seems unsurprised by man’s baser impulses. Yet there are some men he writes about who were also part of the changes following Perestroika; men who wanted more than their own personal aggrandizement. Men who wanted to fight and work for democracy and genuine social change for the Russian people.Ironically, Berezovsky hired one of these men to anchor the news at his TV station, which had enormous reach to hundreds of millions of viewers throughout Russia. This man’s name was Vlad Listyev, and he confronted Berezovsky about the corruption taking hold all around them. He pointed out to him that even at their own station, the advertising was sold in such a way as to promote more graft – describing the system as essentially “rotting at the core.” Mezrich depicts Berezovsky as being almost amused by the man’s innocence and perhaps a bit annoyed at his insolence, but noted that he remained polite in his presence.In the next chapter, Mezrich describes a preoccupied Listyev walking home from work one evening lost in thought about the changes he hoped for in a new Russia he still wanted to believe in. He was so preoccupied that when he reached his doorstep, he never saw the gun that soon began firing at him.He was murdered; an unsolved murder like so many in Russia. Listyev had simply disappeared.