But the calamity also created opportunities for people to become rich almost overnight. For aficionados, Medvedev provides a detailed analysis of this new but small class of Russians who acquired vast fortunes during what can only be described as the looting of Russia. One of them is the subject of Paul Klebnikov's excellent book Godfather of the Kremlin, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the Yeltsin era.

Klebnikov, a senior editor at Forbes, makes its amply clear that thievery on such a scale has occurred with the cooperation of top political leaders. The businessmen, in a strict sense, committed no crimes and broke no laws; they were advised and helped by Yeltsin's young reformers in the Kremlin. Virtually all the people around Yeltsin, including members of his family and the President himself, are portrayed as deeply corrupt. "Yeltsin was very quickly compromised by all those things that accompany limitless power: flattery, luxury, absolute irresponsibility," Yeltsin's former chief of security is quoted as saying.

Klebnikov's vivid portrait of Boris Berezovsky, until recently one of the wealthiest men in Russia, is closely documented by detailing financial transactions, strategies and alliances. Berezovsky's fortunes rose after the publication in the early 1990s of Yeltsin's memoirs Notes of a President, which Berezovsky had partly underwritten. Having expected to make $1 million, Yeltsin was disappointed by his far more modest proceeds. At that point, according to Klebnikov, Berezovsky began putting funds into Yeltsin's personal account at Barclays Bank in London, explaining that this was income generated by the memoir. Berezovsky in turn became a Yeltsin favorite (by 1994 Yeltsin had $3 million in the account).

In addition to Berezovsky, a former scientist turned car dealer, Klebnikov skillfully describes other members of the clique of predatory oligarchs who plundered the country's most important assets with the connivance of the regime. "He and his crony capitalists produced no benefit to Russia's consumers, industries, or treasury. No new wealth was created." They did, however, produce substantial benefits to Yeltsin and his entourage.

Yeltsin, in Midnight Diaries, dismisses such allegations. "In fact, these people don't have any links to the criminal world. These are not robber barons and not the heads of mafia clans. These are representatives of big capital who have entered into close and complex relationships with the government." The evidence indicates otherwise, though. Klebnikov's presentation suggests that Berezovsky was involved in mafia wars, that he attempted to have his chief rival killed and that he was the target of an assassination attempt himself. (Berezovsky was badly injured and his driver decapitated by a bomb placed near his automobile.)

Klebnikov may indeed go too far, however, when he asserts that Berezovsky, as a private individual, managed to "hijack the state." Berezovsky's influence was always directly linked to his proximity to Yeltsin. Yeltsin appointed the oligarch to several top posts, including that of deputy chairman of the National Security Council. But ultimately Berezovsky remained a moneyman who was never allowed into the charmed circle of power. Political power in Russia, when it came to a crunch, always had more punch than financial muscle.

Klebnikov adds his voice to recent charges that the Clinton Administration stuck by Yeltsin even though it knew all along about the unsavory nature of his regime. The Administration, he writes, "while trumpeting the principles of democracy and the free market, repeatedly ignored evidence that the Yeltsin regime was a kleptocracy."

Gaidar, the architect of Yeltsin's shock therapy, acknowledged in a 1997 book that the entire Yeltsin program was a failure. "Unfortunately," he writes, "the combination of imperial rhetoric, economic adventurism, and large-scale theft seems likely to become the long-term determinants of Russian realities." The term now commonly used to describe Russia is a "bandit state." Reddaway and Glinski call it "market bolshevism."

The new books have punched some big holes in the Yeltsin legend as well as in Clinton's own uncritical backing for the Russian president. Reddaway and Glinski provide some evidence that Yeltsin used his secret police to stage "a provocation that unleashed violence on the part of the opposition, thus giving Yeltsin a pretext to proceed with a bloody crackdown on the parliament." Clinton joined Yeltsin's war against Parliament, saying, "We cannot afford to be in the position of wavering at this moment, or backing off or giving any encouragement to people who clearly want to derail the election process and are not committed to reform." An unnamed US official was quoted by Newsweek as saying the Administration "would have supported Yeltsin even if his response had been more violent than it was." (Official figures say 187 people died and almost 500 were wounded in the attack.) Charles Blitzer, chief economist on Russia for the World Bank, commented on the incident: "I've never had so much fun in my life." Another Western economist advising the Yeltsin government was quoted in the press as saying, "With parliament out of the way, this is a great time for reform."

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