Word: russianizing
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Lebedev seems an unlikely person to make that case. A few weeks earlier, near the center of Moscow in a stately pink building where he sometimes works and sleeps, Lebedev gave me a condensed history of the Russian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - the beginnings of post-Soviet capitalism, the rise of the oligarchs, the loans-for-shares scandal, his acquisition of National Reserve Bank, the rise of Putin, the fall of the oligarchs, his 28% stake in Aeroflot, the Khodorkovsky affair, the forthcoming launch of his restaurant in London, the end of democracy...
...pictures of the fashions of Russian Czars...
Herein lies the reason for Lebedev's split personality. He is indeed an oligarch - the Russian magazine Finans reported that he was the 25th wealthiest person in the country in 2008, up from No. 46 in 2007. But he has never bent the knee to Putin. In Lebedev we find, if you like, the good oligarch - the Russian with whom Westerners can do business. He has made friends with prominent people in London (Elton John, Margaret Thatcher) and Hollywood (Kevin Spacey, John Malkovich), floating freely between boardrooms and state dinners. In March, Lebedev traveled to Washington with Gorbachev...
...Question Lenin Asked What is not simple is Russia. That quintessentially Russian query - What is to be done? - continues to bedevil the Kremlin. The country is, after all, falling apart. The price of oil is down sharply from its high of $147 a barrel in July 2008. The markets have been badly shaken by Putin's attack on steel giant Mechel, the breakup of the oil conglomerate TNK-BP (during which the Russians none-so-subtly squeezed out their British partners), and last summer's war with Georgia. And then, of course, there's the global financial crisis, which...
...most of Alaska's history, the environment has been an afterthought on the road to exploitation. From the arrival of Russian fur trappers in the 1780s, the Last Frontier has been a rich trove of resources. Today oil and natural gas provide more than 85% of the state's revenues, along with a royalty check for nearly every one of Alaska's 686,000 residents. "Being against development here is literally the third rail of politics," says Bryce Edgmon, an Alaska state representative from Bristol...