This group was seeking also to help themselves. They were a group of trained officers, very interested in economic liberalism, but with political con… - Karen Dawisha

Putin’s relationship with his friends was... of reciprocity: ...supporting their raids on private businesses, providing ...no-bid state contracts ...allowing the courts to legalize their activities and criminalize those of ...opponents. In return ...they became the bulwark of his base ...helped finance and secure his electoral victories ... removed ...enemies... and... paid him . All... began in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, when he started to promote ...s from ...Leningrad and ...

[T]his older generation of KGB generals... who were not in prison, put people in and got them prepared, and Putin was the one who rose to the top... That's my argument.

Seeing the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe after 1989, and the loss of the ruling status of communist parties... the [CPSU] authorized the ... to move money out of the Soviet Union, realizing that if the CPSU lost its ruling status... [i.e.,] access to the state budget without limit, they would need money to live in a . Something that the Polish, East German and Hungarian parties hadn't thought about.