After this broadcast was taped, the anti-Putin Russian oligarch Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in Moscow. As a “young wolf” shock therapist and privateer in the Yeltsin government, Nemtsov sang the praises of what he called “bandit capitalism.”

Nemtsov helped direct the process of nomenklatura privatization, by which the state property of the USSR was dished out to greedy adventurers who thus became the post-Soviet oligarchs. Nemtsov then sought a career as a demagogue with his reactionary “Union of Right Forces,” but he got nowhere. Most likely some cabal within NATO intelligence decided that he was worth more as a martyr than as a failed rabble rouser. It is certain that Putin had no reason to fear him. The western media are scurrying to canonize him as St. Boris the “towering figure” of the post-Soviet era (Washington Post), but his mourners were dominated by fellow oligarchs like Chubais, who incongruously prattled about democracy.

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