Oligarchs are not simply rich men with political opinions. In the post-Soviet space, they are a structural component of regime maintenance: a class of asset holders whose wealth depends on proximity to executive power, and whose compliance is purchased through…
How Russian Courts Use Sequential Administrative and Criminal Charges to Double Pre-Trial Detention in Political Cases
Case No. 1-284/2023. Tverskoy District Court, Moscow. March 2023. A 34-year-old software engineer—let’s call him Anton—stands accused under Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code (КоАП РФ): possession or public display of extremist symbols. His offense was reposting an image from…
The Oligarch as Infrastructure: How Post-Soviet Fortunes Stabilize Authoritarian Rule
The Oligarch as Infrastructure: How Post-Soviet Fortunes Stabilize Authoritarian Rule By Yelena Sorokina | April 7, 2025 The modern oligarch operates not from a throne, but from a boardroom, merging state and private capital into a single instrument of control.…
The Oligarchic Bargain: How Post-Soviet Tycoons Underwrite Authoritarian Stability
Calling someone an ‘oligarch’ in the post-Soviet space isn’t just a lazy shorthand for a rich guy. It’s a precise, if legally fuzzy, political category. These are business magnates whose fortunes don’t exist despite the regime—they exist because of it.…
The Oligarch’s Bargain: How Wealth and Power Cement Authoritarian Rule in Post-Soviet States
When the Soviet Union came apart in the early 1990s, the wreckage of voucher privatization and fire-sale auctions didn’t just create a few rich men. It birthed a new political species: the oligarch. These were not entrepreneurs in any normal…