The Russian polling service Vox Populi published in early 1997 the latest list of Russia’s fifty most influential businessmen. Number 1 on the list is Rem Vyakhirev, chief of Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly. Numbers 2, 3, and 4 are top bankers who control huge and rapidly expanding retail, media, and industrial empires: Alexander Smolensky of Stolichny Savings Bank, Vladimir Gusinsky of Most Group, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Rosprom, an investment group spun off last year from Menatep Bank. Also among the top ten are Vagit Alekperov, head of the oil conglomerate Lukoil; Anatoly Dyakov, head of a major utility, United Energy Systems; and the heads of four top banks—including Sberbank, the state savings bank.

Behind these men are "money, relatives, friendship with top government officials, mass media and many other things," according to a commentary in the weekly newspaper Interfax—Argumenty i Fakty. The majority of these businessmen will most likely exercise considerable influence on the state’s economic policy in 1997.

Just how much of the political and economic process do these men control? Financier Boris Berezovsky reported late last year that a "magnificent seven" group of bankers and businessmen (including him) controls 50 percent of the Russian economy. Nervous about the social consequences of closing down insolvent behemoths, the government strikes deals with tax debtors for long-term payment or investment credits—schemes that don’t necessarily enforce financial discipline.

Some of the most influential Russian entrepreneurs, in alphabetical order:

• Boris Berezovsky, 50, owns the national Lada car dealership network as well as the All-Russia Automobile Alliance. (The company raised $50 million in a public offering in 1993 on the so-far-unfulfilled promise to build a Russian people’s car.) Berezovsky and allies bought the no. 9 oil concern Sibneft for a mere $100 million. Berezovsky owns 16 percent of Russian Public Television, the largest national network; 20 percent of Moscow’s TV-6; and 50 percent of the weekly magazine Ogonyok.

• Vladimir Goussinsky, 44, founder of Most Bank and Russia’s leading press czar. A former engineer and theater director, he controls the country’s first independent TV station NTV, the daily newspaper Sevodnya, the NTV-Plus pay entertainment network, and other media holdings.

• Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 33, is president of Rosprom, (earlier called president of Bank Menatep, Russia’s sixth largest bank. The former chemist and Communist Youth League activist recently bought 78 percent of Yukos, the no. 2 oil giant, whose annual revenues are around $3 billion, for a mere $168 million and became chairman. Khodarkovsky owns Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper, and 10 percent of Independent Media and is publisher of Russian Cosmopolitan and various other papers.

• Vladimir Potanin, 36, is a former foreign trade ministry bureaucrat who founded the country’s biggest private bank, Uneximbank, and the eighth largest, International Finance Corp. He also owns Russia’s biggest ferrous metals producer, Norilsk Nickel, and its no. 4 oil company, Sidanco. (Potanin bought the voting stock of Norilsk Nickel, which produces 20 percent of the world’s nickel supply and more than 40 percent of its platinum-group metals, for a mere $170 million. He paid just $130 million for 51 percent of the oil giant Sidanco.) In all, seven of Russia’s twenty largest companies are considered members of the Potanin clan, tied by equity or credit relationships. (These twenty companies account for 56 percent of Russia’s industrial production and a much higher proportion of its annual exports, according to the Moscow economics journal Expert.)

• Alexander Smolensky, 42, is president of Stolichny Savings Bank (Russia’s eighth largest), which recently swallowed up the state-owned agricultural lender Agroprombank (fifth largest). Smolensky is a former construction manager.

• V. Vinogradov owns Inkombank (Russia’s fourth largest), which has a huge branch network and interests in metals as well as a stake in the oil pipeline monopoly Transneft.

• Rem Vyakhirev, chairman of Gazprom, owns 30 percent of NTV and 3 percent of Russian Public Television.

These "latter-day robber barons" are forming new power centers—built mostly around commercial banks and natural resource companies—that control huge swaths of the Russian economy. They dominate the country’s trade in arms and precious metals, as well as its production of copper, nickel, and a quarter of its oil. They control the no. 1 and no. 3 television networks, the Visa bankcard network, a big chunk of the pulp and paper industry, and an increasing portion of the food processing industry and the short-term bond market.

That is only one side of the story. Russia’s new fat cats are also providing essential financial services—including loans—to the burgeoning small and medium-size businesses visible in any big Russian city. These cottage industries support millions of ordinary Russians who are earning a decent, legitimate living. This middle class is also buying a large quantity of Western products, including $10 billion of imported foodstuffs alone last year. Optimism about this growth helped make Russia’s stock market the hottest in the world last year despite the country’s political troubles.