Rating: 
Summary: well-written
Review: As other reviewers and readers have noted, Freeland's book _The Sale of the Century_ offers a vivid account of the human side of the story that is so essential to grasping the magnitude of what really happened in the Russian Nineties. The narrative clearly reveals the author's exceptional competence in the area of Russian current affairs. Her familiarity with the turns of history so central to Russia's shaky experiment in marketization makes this work indispensable for the student of contemporary Russia. While the myriad anecdotes, names, and intricate descriptions of events can definitely require slogging through, a careful reading will be an excellent education in the political and economic history of contemporary Russia. Also included, scattered amidst the detailed journalistic narrative, are intense historical insights on the nature of Russia's destiny and self-image in civilizational history. Overall, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A readable guide for practical reformers
Review: Bringing economic revolution is far more complicated that any political revolutions that we know off. In Sale of the Century, Chrystina Freeland has captured the complex interplay between the objectives of the Economic intellect their interplay with the agenda of different political "power brokers" through the rollercoster ride of Russia's transition for communism to capitalism. The book has an interesting blend of story telling and discussions of social and economic issues faced by Russia in its privatization effort
Rating:
Summary: well-written
Review: Chrystia Freeland, Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, chronicles Russia's roller-coaster ride from communism to crony capitalism. She writes poetically, with creative metaphors, colorful word pictures, and a keen insight into Russian history. The copious adverbs, adjectives, and details--sometimes superfluous-may, however, irritate those reading her book for the "bottom line." The book also omits analysis of organized crime in general. On the other hand, a key strength of Sale of the Century is Freeland's ability to bring to life the key players in Russian politics: Yeltsin, Gaidar, Chubais, and the handful of wealthy oligarchs. As a journalist, she was able to meet most of them often. The book enables the reader to develop a more refined and differentiated understanding of the oligarchs.
Among these are Mikhail Friedman ("the outsider") who heads the Alfa Group, an oil, industrial, trading, and financial conglomerate. As a Jewish Ukrainian barred from prestigious educational establishments, Friedman began his entrepreneurial ventures early, starting with illegal bartering of theater tickets and later obtaining Western consumer goods for top officials (p. 115).
Mikhail Khordokovsky ("the apparatchik") is also Jewish and leads Menatep, the bank and financial-industrial conglomerate. Outwardly docile with a soft voice and slight stutter, Khordokovsky is adept at winning the trust of the government officials, having pursued a parallel career in the Komsomol. Beneath the subordinate exterior, however, lies a ruthless person who installs hidden video cameras in his buildings and does not hesitate to fire slackers (p. 121).
Unlike Friedman and Khordokovsky, Vladimir Potanin ("the blueblood") was the son of a senior Soviet trade official and already had a promising Soviet career. He realized in the nick of time that, as the Soviet Union's collapse accelerated, "the advantages that had ensured Potanin's advancement suddenly threatened to become golden handcuffs" (p. 129). He started his own business, which eventually became Oneximbank, which now handles the "juiciest" government accounts, including the State Customs Agency .., and the state arms-trading company "Rosvooruzheniye," which keeps "a few tens of millions" on Potanin's books (p. 131).
Vladimir Gusinsky ("the impresario") dabbled in many entrepreneurial activities (driving a gypsy cab, peddling blue jeans, and "medicinal" copper bracelets) and also worked as a theater director before founding the consortium of banks (the Most group) and persuading his patron Yuri Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow, to transfer money to them from Soviet-era banks. He founded inter alia the newspaper Segodnya and the first independent television channel (NTV).
His main rival is Boris Berezovsky ("the nomad"), although the two oligarchs have functioned temporarily as allies. Perhaps the most unsavory of all the oligarchs, Berezovsky, also Jewish, has been particularly good at winning the favour of members of Yeltsin's entourage (especially the latter's youngest daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko) and directly influencing the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000.---Johanna Granville, Ph.D.
Rating: 
Summary: Memorable, comprehensive and readable!
Review: Freeland's book presents the events that took place in a Russia recovering from a disastrous, failed experiment with communism and its first attempts at capitalism and the free-market economy in a detailed and highly-readable format. One of the most important chapters in the history of modern Russia is beautifully embossed in Freeland's elegant language. She captures the key players well with memorable phrases and interviews and life in Russia during that period with personal anecdotes. Sale of the Century definitely takes readers on a wild ride to the Russia in transition!
Rating:
Summary: If you read just one book on the New Russia....
Review: I arrived in Moscow at the same time Chrystia Freeland did. Like her, I found fascinating material for a book on contemporary Russia almost every day.The terrible thing is Ms. Freeland has now written the book I had planned to write. She had great access to Russia's prominent players and has written a lasting, undeniably readable, work on current political and economic developments in Russia. She has an entertaining style built upon a savvy Westerner's view of Russia as well a knack for finding a memorable phrase to encapsulate her characterization of specific traits, periods and events. These bon mots appear so regularly I took to keeping a list. My list of 25 includes "unofficial capitalist politburo," "the Kremlin's own Dirty Harry" and "gladiator capitalism." The best of all may be on page 121, but you must judge for yourself. "Sale of the Century" and Yevtushenko's "Don't Die Before You're Dead" are far and away the two best books on the New Russia. Now that Chrystia Freeland is herself far away from Russia, perhaps she will permit me another chance to share my views on a Reborn Russia.
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable account
Review: I have lived in Moscow since 1997, and worked there since 1991. I was peripherally involved in a lot of the things that are described in this book, and much of my job involved commenting on them. I can recommend this book to both experts and amateurs. Ms Freeland was the FT correspondent in Moscow during the heyday of Russia's oligarchs, and her story is based on a framework of meetings with all the people who helped a small group of bankers walk off with a significant chunk of Russia's state-owned assets. One of the things that I most enjoyed about this book are the personal details about the players, and the gossippy anecdotes about the things they got up to. The detail is important in Russia, and although she covers it, she never gets you bogged down in it. I think that this will have staying power as one of the better contemporary accounts of a fascinating period in history. I can certainly voice for its authenticity. One of my colleagues, who was closer to the action, feels that she seemed to have too much admiration for a group of people who are, when all is said and done, criminals. Sometimes you do have to remind yourself that the interviewee would be in jail in any civilised country. But then, the quality of a story is not in its moral judgements, but in whether it conveys the information, and keeps you interested. This book definitely does that.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: Interesting insights into the personalities involved during the last decades events. Reads like a popular highbrow novel. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to be serialised in something like the (British) Sunday Times. It is certainly not a bad book by any means if you skip much of the superfluity present, often seemingly to highlight the authors access to particular personalities. However the books complete omission of the role the US played both at an economic and political level compels me to come to the conclusion that this book is seriously flawed in its objectivity. There are many other books that will deliver you that objectivity, check out Stephen Cohen for one.
Rating: 
Summary: DID CLINTON AND GORE LOSE RUSSIA?
Review: Privatization reduced the Russian economy to the size of Belgium, brought life expectancy below third-world levels, ruined the monetary and financial systems with hyper-inflation, created massive unemployment, poverty and starvation and put most of the econmy - Russia has vast natural resources and well-educated people - into the hands of a few utterly corrupt and cruellly criminal "oligarchs." An unprecedented catastrophe for the world, not just for Russians. Whose fault was this? Two years ago an American professor, Janine Wedel, published COLLISION AND COLLUSION, which identified a crew of Harvard advisors as the culprits. They were given extraordinary powers and resources by President Clinton and mentored by Vice-President Gore. "Ill-conceived" is far too kind a description of what t hey did. They created the arguably most currupt society in world history; "Mafia" is the curse today of Eastern Europe - referring to the awful talons of Russian thugs. Were the Harvard guys corrupt? That may be looked into. Did Clinton and Gore do this intentially, to take a piece of the action? Maybe. Canadian journalist Chrstia Freeland's new book puts a different spin on the same facts. It's very thinly diguised "damage control" for Clinton et al. Warding off criminal prosection, it appears. Freeland doesn't address the roles of Clinon, Gore, or Harvard and its powerful allies in the US Treasury and State Departments. Her answer to the whodunnit question is just a quote from a local policenman "Russians steal." Freeland's chattey book is a set of TV talk-show type interviews with several main "oligarchs" - we used to call them "Dons" or "Godfathers." A little too breezy for explaining the nitty-gritty like "loans for vouchers." Intellectually, Freeland comes across seriously inferior to Wedel - whom she pointedly ignores though they were talking to the same people at the same time, apparently. Wedel''s well-received book is much more useful, but Freeland's agenda is, I think, very important. Why would a slavic experrt from Canada and Britain want to cover up for Clinton and Gore? At this time? Is someone thinking of Presidential pardons?
Rating:
Summary: Crime of the century!
Review: The author clearly intends us to appreciate the characters she portrays as dynamic and progressive entrepreneurs. But she actually gives us a picture of a bunch of greedy criminals who have shamelessly looted and wrecked their country.
The government sold off several huge oil companies including LUKoil, Russia's largest company, Yukos, Russia's second biggest oil company, and Sidanco. Mikhail Khodorovsky loaned the government $159 million for a 45% stake in Yukos in 1995. He sold it to himself in 1996, using a shell company, for $160 million. The state got $1 million profit; Khodorovsky got the company, valued at $15 billion in 2002. He bought oil cheap from the extractor companies, and pledged it, at high export prices, to secure the loans. This transfer pricing stripped the assets and values from the producers, who got only the debts and expenses. Goldman Sachs profited from the looting: they underwrote Khodorovsky's $500 million loan against future oil sales.
In 2000, Sibneft bought 27% of its shares for $542 million from shareholders. Less than a year later it secretly sold those shares, for far less, back to the same shareholders. It then announced a $612 million dividend to the stockholders - one of whom, Roman Abramovich, now the owner of Chelsea Football Club, owned 87% of the stock. He had stripped Sibneft's cash to fund his repurchase.
The government sold off other national assets at knock-down prices, including tax concessions, TV channels, radio frequency licences, export licences and government bank accounts. Yeltsin privatised Channel 1, which reached 200 million Russians, without the legally required auction, selling it to his ally Berezovsky, whose capital was only $2.2 million. The government sold bonds to the capitalists' banks at a huge discount. The banks resold the bonds at market prices, raising cash supposedly for Yeltsin's re-election campaign, but the owners pocketed most of it.
The capitalists looted state funds and the Soviet Union's gold reserves. The new banks took billions of dollars of party, government and trade union funds, and transferred the money to foreign bank accounts. Russia's central bankers defrauded Russia by transferring profits to offshore tax havens, and used the profits to pay themselves bonuses.
Anatoly Chubais, head of the State Privatization Committee, said of Russia's capitalists, "They steal and steal and steal. They are stealing absolutely everything and it is impossible to stop them." By 1999, 38% of Russia's people existed below the poverty line. 90% of the people endured worsening conditions, while the handful of arrogant capitalists made colossal profits by theft and corruption. That's capitalism for you!
Rating:
Summary: A Thorough History of Capitalist Russia
Review: The failure of Russia's transition to a market economy easily ranks as one of the most important stories of the 1990s. Unfortunately, while this story is important, it is not well known. In part, this must be blamed on the nature of Russia's market transition: much of it was done behind closed doors in the proverbial "smoke filled room." This fact makes Crystia Freeland's book all the more valuable, for she, through in-depth interviews with nearly all the important players, has penetrated beyond this haze to give us the real story of the capitalist transition in Russia. Freeland spent several years in Russia writing for the Financial Times and it shows, as her book echoes with every nuance and detail of this story. Through direct quotes, a myriad of background details, and anecdotes, the leaders of Russia's marketization are transformed from names to living, breathing entities. Furthermore, where other accounts might be satisfied to present only the most oblique facts, Freeland's book digs deep to provide the real story of what happened behind the scenes. Although the depth of this book is certainly a strong selling point, Freeland's prose is also notable. Often gripping, never cumbersome, her prose exceptionally conveys the details of this story from her notebook to our eyes. Freeland's own analysis and insight gives us a valuable insiders' interpretation of events and adds a personal touch. Where appropriate, irreverent details are sprinkled in providing color to the story as well as quite a few shocks. Overall, you'd be hard pressed to find a better account of Russia's market transition than the one Crystia Freeland presents in Sale of the Century.
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